[Problems concerning old-aged patients with pulmonary tuberculosis from the clinical point of view (author's transl)].

One fourth of all patients with bacteriologic positive tuberculosis, who had been admitted in the Robert-Koch-Hospital of Leipzig between 1974 and 1978, were older than 70 years of age. Most of them suffered from an extensive, contagious, cavitary disease with impressive clinical symptoms. The prevailing part of them could be treated by the so-called "Zweiphasentherapie". That means a daily initial treatment was followed by an intermittent period of chemotherapy. Most of them reached quickly sputum conversion. As yet the bacteriologic relapse is very low.