[Characteristics of clinical course of pulmonary tuberculosis in penitentiary population].

The course of consumption was studied in 374 residents of the Sverdlovsk Region who had been in prison for different periods of time. Among them, there were prevalent young males with lower educational and professional levels, who were single or divorced, and had a poor social status. A third of the patients had fallen ill mainly in the first 5 years of imprisonment. The disease was detected in the half of the remaining persons in the first 3 years after imprisonment. Despite frequent cases with severe tuberculosis, long-term multimodality therapy allowed the tuberculosis process to be adequately treated and the disease to be cured in most patients. The main cause that aggravates the course of tuberculosis is the patients' refusal to take a systematic treatment.