Premium
Childhood and adolescent tuberculosis in northern Taiwan: an institutional experience during 1994–1999
Author(s) -
Wong KS,
Chiu CH,
Huang YC,
Lin TY
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
acta paediatrica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.772
H-Index - 115
eISSN - 1651-2227
pISSN - 0803-5253
DOI - 10.1111/j.1651-2227.2001.tb02462.x
Subject(s) - medicine , tuberculosis , pyrazinamide , isoniazid , streptomycin , pediatrics , tuberculin , mycobacterium tuberculosis , referral , rifampicin , drug resistance , antibiotics , pathology , family medicine , microbiology and biotechnology , biology
This study evaluated the clinical characteristics of childhood and adolescent tuberculosis (TB) at the end of the twentieth century in a referral children's hospital in northern Taiwan. The hospital charts were reviewed retrospectively of children/adolescents aged less than 18 y who were seen in a children's hospital in northern Taiwan between 1994 and 1999 and diagnosed with TB. A total of 62 individuals was diagnosed during this period. The patients' demographic data, presenting symptoms, clinical features, bacteriological results, drug susceptibility and tuberculin skin‐test results were analysed. Most diagnosed cases lay in one of two main age ranges, younger than 5 y and adolescents. The presenting symptoms of study subjects were typically non‐specific. Bone involvement occurred for 21 patients (33.9%) and was the most common extrapulmonary manifestation. Mycobacterium tuberculosis was isolated from 47 patients (75.8%). Five isolates were resistant to pyrazinamide, three to streptomycin and one to isoniazid, but no multidrug resistant isolates of TB were detected from culture‐proven cases. Seventeen of 47 (36.2%) culture‐proven patients revealed negative acid‐fast staining initially but, subsequently, M. tuberculosis was isolated from various clinical specimens using a standard method at a later date. The tuberculin skin test was positive for 24 of 32 patients (75%) who received such an examination. Conclusion: Extrathoracic TB was more common in children below 5y of age than their adolescent counterparts, and chiefly involved the peripheral long bones. The potential drug resistance of M. tuberculosis in childhood and adolescent TB did not appear to have been a major problem in northern Taiwan before the year 2000.