Ammarah Jamal, Yousuf Yahya, Aisha Mehnaz, Zakira Mastoor.
Spectrum of Tuberculosis in Children at Tertiary Care Hospital: Sharing Experience.
Pak Paed J Jan ;42(1):32-6.

Objective: To determine the pattern and outcome of tuberculosis seen in children registered at pediatric TB clinic of Civil Hospital, Karachi. Methodology: The records of children registered at TB clinic between 2008 to 2015 were analyzed. TB was diagnosed by the isolation of AFB from sputum, gastric aspirate, or other fluids or biopsy specimen. In the absence of gold standard for diagnosis of TB in children Kenneth Jones scoring chart was used. Children scoring > 7 was considered cases of TB and were started on anti tuberculous therapy. The information obtained was entered on pre-designed proforma and were analyzed on SPSS version 21. Frequencies and percentages were used for quantitative variables. Results: Records of 1904 children with TB were analyzed which showed 52.99% of the total patients were females. Most of the children (41.28%) belonged to 5- 10 year age group. Lungs were the site of involvement in 1119 (58.71%) followed by tuberculous lymphadenitis, [275 (14.4%)] and abdominal tuberculosis in [144(7.56%)].Completion of treatment was observed in 1180 (61.97%) of patients while 167 (08.77%) were still on treatment. The defaulters amount to 437 (22.95%). Conclusion: Lungs were the most common site of involvement followed by tuberculous lymphadenitis and abdominal tuberculosis. There is very high percentage of defaulters.

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