[Effectiveness of fluorography in the prevention and diagnosis of pulmonary tuberculosis and cancer].

Annual fluorographic examinations, involving about 80% of adult population, helped detect 81.6 +/- 0.6% of patients with pulmonary tuberculosis and 37 +/- 0.5% of those with pulmonary carcinoma. Unjustified reduction of the number of prophylactic phorofluorographies resulted in a reduction of the level of diagnosis of these conditions: the share of detected tuberculosis patients reduced to 62.3%. The incidence of bacterial discharge in newly detected cases increased by 19.7%, the disintegration phase increased by 16%. Decrease of the bacillary nucleus parallelled by an almost twofold growth in the number of lethal cases of tuberculosis evidence poor detection of the patients. Reduction in the number of cases of pulmonary carcinoma detected by prophylactic photofluorography resulted in the reduction of operable patients with this condition from 23.5 to 18%. A retrospective analysis of photofluorograms of newly detected patients with destructive tuberculous processes demonstrated the necessity of annual photofluorographic check-ups of the adult population aimed at the detection of pulmonary tuberculosis. The authors emphasize that the intervals between prophylactic check-ups of subjects at risk of developing pulmonary tuberculosis should by no means be prolonged.