Aim: Evaluation of the contribution of general practitioners to the early diagnosis of tuberculosis in the studied period. Analysis of cases not diagnosed as active TB, from those suspected by the general practitioner and the real cases with respiratory lesions.
Material and methods: We conducted an observational epidemiologic study aiming at evaluating the diagnosis of pulmonary TB at the level of primary care medicine.
Results: The difference between conformed TB patients that have been referred with the suspicion of TB and those without suspicion is significant (p <0.0001), and the risk of disease estimated by OR was 21.54. More than half of the patients (139), had positive microscopic examination and culturing, representing 62.61%. In 10.36% microscopic examination was positive and culturing was negative (13 patients). Negative microscopic examination and positive culturing were detected in 5.86% of the patients. The majority of suspected/confirmed new patients were living in urban environments. The urban/rural ratio was 1.27. The reasons why the general practitioner suspected tuberculosis, in the order of frequency, were the following: cough/dry cough, sweating/nocturnal sweating, fever/persisting fever. Among the TB types, we noted the large percentage of patients with infiltrating, nodular tuberculosis confined to the volume of one pulmonary segment (30.78%), and 19.87% of the cases were multicavity tuberculosis; also, we noted the presence of caseous tuberculosis with moderate volumes of infiltrates, confined to a pulmonary lobe (18.27%).
Conclusion: Early diagnosis of tuberculosis in the primary healthcare network is a continuous challenge for the general practitioner.