Fiberoptic bronchoscopy for the rapid diagnosis of smear-negative pulmonary tuberculosis

BMC Infectious Diseases

Table 1 Demographic and clinical characteristics of all sputum smear-negative TB suspects

Characteristic	All suspects	TB	Non-TB	P-value
	N = 126	N = 54	N = 72
Age, years (mean ± SD)	51.0 ± 18.2	45.3 ± 18.8	55.4 ± 16.6	0.002
Male, n (%)	68 (54.0)	26 (48.1)	42 (58.3)	0.256
Previous TB history, n (%)	33 (26.2)	8 (14.8)	25 (34.7)	0.014
Immunocompromised patient, n (%)	11 (8.7)	4 (7.4)	7 (9.7)	0.649
CXR positivity, n (%)	44 (34.9)	29 (53.7)	15 (20.8)	< 0.001
QFT-IT positivity^*, n (%)	33/51 (64.7)	20/23 (87.0)	13/28 (46.4)	0.009
Active pulmonary TB, n (%)	54 (42.9)	54 (100.0)
Culture confirmed, n (%)^†		48 (88.9)
Biopsy confirmed, n (%)		6 (11.1)

Definition of abbreviations: TB = tuberculosis, SD = standard deviation, n = number, CXR = chest x-ray, QFT-IT = QuantiFERON®-TB Gold In-Tube.
*51 of 126 cases were examined with this test.
^†Of the 48 culture-confirmed cases, 28 showed cultures positive in both sputum and bronchial washing specimens, 6 only in sputum and 14 only in bronchial washing specimens.

ISSN: 1471-2334