Pulmonary tuberculosis: a multifaceted disease.

One reason for the increasing misdiagnosis of tuberculosis in adults is the fact that one of every three patients may present with a roentgenographic pattern considered atypical for the disease. In this article a number of such atypical patterns--pleural manifestations, nodular forms of the disease, and infiltrates in unusual locations--are discussed and illustrated by means of case summaries. Awareness of these variations would help in the diagnosis of tuberculosis, which is progressively becoming a responsibility of physicians involved in primary care.