Pretreatment loss to follow-up of tuberculosis patients in Chennai, India: a cohort study with implications for health systems strengthening

Table 1 Quality of patient address and phone number information in designated microscopy center (DMC) registries in Chennai and ease of patient trackability

	Chest symptomatics (n = 3696)	Diagnosed smear-positive patients (n = 423)
	N (%)	N (%)
Phone number listed in DMC registry
Yes	2231 (60.4)	316 (74.7)
No	1454 (39.3)	104 (24.6)
Illegible	11 (0.3)	3 (0.7)
Address listed in DMC registry
Trackable	606 (16.4)	56 (13.2)
Incomplete or illegible	3046 (83.4)	367 (86.8)
Missing	44 (1.2)	0 (0.0)
Ease of “trackability”
Probably trackable^a	414 (11.2)	43 (10.2)
Possibly trackable^a	2009 (54.4)	286 (67.6)
Untrackable^a	1273 (34.4)	94 (22.2)

^aPatients were “probably trackable” if a legible phone number and trackable address were available; “possibly trackable” if only one of the two was available; and “untrackable” if neither a legible phone number nor trackable address was available

ISSN: 1471-2334