A Study on hematological indices of tuberculosis patients attending in a tertiary care hospital in Dhaka city.

Abstract

Background: Among all the infectious diseases, tuberculosis (TB) remains the deadliest. In 2008, the World Health Organization (WHO) ranked Bangladesh 6th among the world’s 22 high-burden TB countries. Objective: The objective of this study was to observe the hematological status of tuberculosis patients and to observe the change in patients’ medical condition (AFB smear test) followed by diagnosis after one month. Methodology: The prospective study was carried out among admitted patients in National Institute of Diseases of the Chest and Hospital (NIDCH) of Dhaka city. A total of 22 new TB cases were selected by simple random sampling technique. Patients who have been diagnosed with tuberculosis by AFB microscopy or radiological test were considered for this study. After taking informed consent from patients, a semi-structured questionnaire was administered for data collection. Results: The study showed that 60% poor TB patients admitted at NIDCH were from the rural areas whereas 87.5% urban patients were found to be from middle class family and no poor class urban patients. The association was found to be significant (P= 0.012). The gender distribution of patients illustrated that men (90.9%) are more likely to affected by TB. 95.5% patients were found to have higher ESR value. 81.8% patients were diagnosed to have anemia. The Mean (± SD) ESR was 58.18 (± 25.73) and White Blood Count was 10081.81 (± 2747.05) respectively. Among the patients, 7 were observed again after one month among which 4 patients became sputum smear negative (SS-) from sputum smear positive (SS+) in the initial diagnosis. Discussion: The complete blood count with ESR was conducted as the first test on a patient suspected to have a disease or infection. In the light of these preliminary findings, higher ESR rate may be useful to detect tuberculosis. Around one-third of tuberculosis cases went undetected, resulting in a larger number of undiagnosed and untreated cases that might spread the disease further. In addition to that extension of Directly Observed Treatment Short Course (DOTS) along with development of rapid diagnostic methods may reduce relapse rate of tuberculosis and improve the current scenario.