Abstract
Introduction: Nowadays, tuberculosis (TB) is still one of the most important causes of disability and fatality in human population in spite of continuous advances in different medical sciences. Concerning to unknown epidemiologic status of TB in Iran, especially in Damghan district, and also the presence of a considerable number of afghan refugees in this district, the current study was conducted to evaluate the epidemiological characteristics of TB disease in according to the data collected from Damghan TB Centre during 2003-2007. Material and Method: This survey was performed as a cross-sectional retrospective study. Different information from the medical file of patients who referred to Damghan TB Centre (including demographic and characteristic of disease) were collected and recorded in separated forms for further analysis. Results: A total of 89 patients were under treatment in the centre during 2003-2007. 26.96% of the patients were under 30 years old and 30.33 % were more than 70 years old. Forty-four patients (49.43%) were women and 45 patients (50.57%) were men. 77.5% of the patients were Iranian and 22.5 % of them were afghan refugees. 59.5% of the patients were lived in urban area and the rest in rural area .88.76% of the patients had pulmonary tuberculosis and 11.24% had non-pulmonary tuberculosis. All of the patients with non-pulmonary tuberculosis were recognized by pathological methods and pulmonary tuberculosis was diagnosed in 78.48 % of the patients using sputum smear direct examination or culture. Duration between manifestation of TB symptoms and diagnosis was about 5 months. Conclusion: The findings of our study showed that the most patients with TB had more than 70 years old and 50% the afghan patients with pulmonary tuberculosis were positive for smear. Also the average period of TB diagnosis in patients was 5 months. Therefore, it recommends a more attention for finding patients with TB among the people over 70 years old and also afghan refugees. It seems to be necessary some seminars or workshops for general physicians and medical doctors in order make more attention for TB diagnosis in patients, and also we suggest a general health education for public
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Copyright
© 2008, Author(s). This open-access article is available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original work is properly cited.