Epidemiological basis of tuberculosis eradication. 8. Some factors of significance for the prognosis for a tuberculosis patient.

It is a general clinical experience that prognosis varies not only from one disease to another, but also between different categories of patients suffering from the same disease. The object of the study reported was to demonstrate quantitatively how the prognosis of respiratory tuberculosis depends upon the patient's age and sex and upon the severity of disease at the time of diagnosis. Based as it is upon a follow-up through the years 1961-64 of all respiratory tuberculosis patients in Denmark, the study also provides an epidemiological characterization of the course of the disease in northern Europe today.TWO ASPECTS OF PROGNOSIS ARE CONSIDERED: the patients' mortality and their curability. A convenient prognosis index for a group of patients, combining the two aspects, is obtained by expressing the number of patients dying before cure as a percentage of the initial size of the group. The comparison between various patient-categories in the study material is made partly by means of this index and partly by means of annual death and cure rates.