Risk Factors Associated with unsuccessful treatment outcomes among Patients with smear positive pulmonary tuberculosis in Iran: A Logistic Regression Model

Abstract

Objective: Tuberculosis is still one of the principal infectious main of disease and death worldwide. The aims of this study were to evaluate the treatment outcome for new smear positive pulmonary TB cases registered in North of Iran and to identify factors associated with non-successful treatment.Methodology: The study of Present was conducted longitudinal (2005-2011). Achecklist containing research variables was applied for data collection. 683 smearpositive pulmonary TB patients were included in the study. Data were analyzed using classical statistical test and logistic regression for adjusting variables effect.Results: The mean age of patients was 49.73±21.57 years. 57.5% of patients were male and 57.4 % of them were urban residents. The treatment outcome of these patients was as followed: treatment success 87.8%, defaulted treatment 2.6%, death 4.4%, failure 2% and transferred out 3.1%. In multivariate regression analysis, patients with non-Iranian nationality, self-administered therapy and positive sputum at the end of the second month of treatment were considered as significant determinants for nonsuccessful treatment.Discussion and conclusion: Assessment of treatment results of studied smear-positive pulmonary tuberculosis patients are desirable according to the goals set by the World Health Organization (cure at least 85% of new sputum smear-positive pulmonary TB). Application of Directly Observed Therapy increases treatment success in all patients, especially patients who are at risk of low treatment success rate.