[Tuberculosis in the Czech Republic in 1994. Does compulsory notification give a true picture of tuberculosis morbidity?].

In the Czech Republic in 1994 a total of 1960 new cases of TB of all forms and localizations were notified, i.e. 19.0 patients per 100,000 population. This number comprised 1644 cases of TB of the respiratory system (15.2 patients/100 000 population). Bacteriological tests were made in 1058 new cases of respiratory TB (10.2/100,000, whereby in 524 patients in sputum acid resistant rods were detected under the microscope. Extrapulmonary forms accounted for 16% of all notified cases of TB and relapses of TB accounted for less than 3% of the total number of notified cases. The TB mortality varied near 0.8 deaths/100,000 population. These numbers did not differ significantly from data for 1992 and 1993 and it may be concluded that the stagnating trend of tuberculosis in this country persists. The notified data made it possible to create a set of direct and indirect epidemiological indicators (age distribution, notifications, prevalence of severe forms, regional distribution, mortality rate and comparison of hospital admission on account of TB), which helped to show that the validity of notification has not changed much in recent years. The data assembled in notifications can therefore be used for comparative studies and they can be considered a measure of the TB morbidity. However, every evaluation of morbidity based on notification cells for verification of the validity of the presented data.