Tuberculosis unit: Study of 10 years of activity (1999-2009) [Unidade de Tuberculose: Casuística de dez anos de actividade (1999-2009)]

Setting: the pulmonology service of a central hospital in lisbon created a unit dedicated to the treatment of tuberculosis (tb). objectives: casuistic analysis and assessment of the predictive factors for in-hospital mortality,over a 10-year period. design: retrospective study,from april 1999 to september 2009,through the statistical package for the social sciences application for binary logistic regression. results: in a total of 1917 patients,most were male (n = 1450; 76%),caucasian (76.6%),with an average age of 43±15.2 years,and 19.8% were immigrants. the retreatments were responsible for 26% of the hospitalizations. the presence of comorbidities was detected in 85.7%,particularly hiv infection (34.7%). the multidrug-resistant (mdr) and the extensively drug resistant (xdr) tb occurred in 6.6% and 6.8%,respectively. the average delay was 28.5±54.8 days,with the mortality rate at 8.6%. the mortality risk was more significant amongst men (or 1.8; 95% ci 1.16---2.90; p < 0.01),in patients with hiv infection (or 3.7; 95% ci 2.47---5.49; p < 0.001),and amongst those who presented mdr tb (or 2.5; 95% ci 1.24---5.15; p < 0.01) and xdr tb (or 5.5; 95% ci 3.14---9.58; p < 0.001). conclusion: a high percentage of patients presented comorbidities,namely hiv infection. the main factors associated with mortality were hiv infection,xdr tb and mdr tb. © 2011 sociedade portuguesa de pneumologia. published by elsevier españa,s.l. all rights reserved.