Features of epidemiological, clinical and diagnostic methods of patients with tuberculosis

Aim: We aimed to detect the usefulness of bronchoscopy and diagnostic methods with epidemiologic, clinical features of patients with tuberculosis. Material and methods: We evaluated the epidemiological features, clinical and diagnostic methods of 108 patient who were diagnosed to have pumonary and extrapulmonary tuberculosis between May 2006 and September 2007. Results: The mean age was 41.9 20.4 and 34.3% of patients were female, %65.7 of patients were male. Seventy two(66.7%) patiens were found to have pulmonary tuberculosis, 2(1.9%) paitents endobronchial tuberculosis, 1(0.9%) patient miliary tuberculosis, 33 (30.5%) patients extrapulmonary tuberculosis. The most common extrapulmonary tuberculosis form was pleural tuberculosis (21.3% of all patient with tuberculosis). We evaluated the diagnostic methods of pulmonary tuberculosis; 62.5% of patients had acid fast bacillus in sputum and 79.1% of patients had positive culture. Eleven (14.6%) patients with pulmonary tuberculosis were diagnosed by transbronchial biopsy. We detected that the usefulness of bronchoscopy in pulmonary tuberculosis was 37.9%. Conclusion: We think that, however, microscopic examination and culture of acid fast bacillus are safe and effective methods for diagnosis of tuberculosis; the interventional and histopathologic diagnostic procedures are also useful methods for diagnosis of tuberculosis.