COMMON FACTORS INFLUENCING DISEASE RECURRENCE RELAPSE AND RE-INFECTION IN TREATED PATIENTS OF TUBERCULOSIS

Background: Tuberculosis is a potentially life-threatening, airborne bacterial infection that can be found worldwide. The treatment regimen is a lengthy one, but if you stick with it and take medications the way you should, you can beat the disease. Even with treatment, however, you can get tuberculosis infection again. Objective: TB recurrence, relapse and re-infection are becoming more common every day in successfully treated patients of tuberculosis. This study aims to determine the common factors influencing T.B recurrence, relapse and re-infection. Methods: This multi-center, cross-sectional study comprised of 200 patients (64.8% males and 35.2% females) chosen via simple random sampling and undergoing treatment for recurrent, relapsed or reinfection of tuberculosis at different T.B centers namely: Government T.B Sanatorium Kotri, Bhittai Hospital Hyderabad, Civil Hospital Hyderabad and Civil Hospital Mirpurkhas, from 1st December 2014 to 10th February 2015. Verbal informed consent was obtained before administering structured self-administered questionnaires. The data obtained was analyzed using SPSS v. 19.0 and Microsoft Excel 2013. Results: The study shows that males are more prone (27.3%) to get a relapse within 2 years while females are less prone 15%. According to social economic status, there is 74.9% chance of low economic class for TB relapse, 19.6 % in case of middle class and 5.5% in case of high economic class. TB is 55.3% more common in those patients whose family members are suffering from same disease. Among cases of relapse within 5 years, 95.6% took medicine without supervision, 86.6% were supervised by the family and 84% by the health professional. Urban areas are less affected with TB relapse within 5 years than the rural areas. Non-smokers are more affected within 5 years while smokers are comparably less affected with TB. Conclusion:My study concluded that secondary TB relapse cases gender variation , social economic status , medical monitoring , TB regimen coarse , family history, smoking all are the common factors which influence TB relapse within 5 years or above 5 years. Keywords: Tuberculosis, Tuberculosis relapse, Tuberculosis Recurrence and Tuberculosis Recurrence.