Spinal Tuberculosis in Pediatric Patients

This cross sectional study was done in National Centre for Tuberculosis and Research and 250 bed TB Hospital, Shymoli, Dhaka. In this study 203 patients suffering from spinal tuberculosis attending the hospital between January 2007 to December 2017 were included. Patient were diagnosed on the basis of clinical manifestation, laboratory, X-ray and magnetic resonance imaging findings (n=37). Histopathological confirmation were done in four cases with fine needle aspiration cytology. The purpose of this study was to analyze pattern of spinal tuberculosis in pediatric patients in a developing country. This study revealed that 20.20 % of the patients were of pediatric age group. There were two peak age groups of incidence of spinal tuberculosis among pediatric patient. The first peak was in age group 2-5 years and there were 16 (38.98 %) children and in the second peak in the age group 11-15 years there were 17 (41.46 %) children. Majority of the patient in the study 22 (53.65 %) were presented with clinical manifestation of evening rise of temperature and weight loss. Among the pediatric patient 31 (75.60 %) comes from very low income family. The predisposing factors included are malnutrition, poor nutrition, sanitation and educational status.