Open AccessEffect of mobile voice calls on treatment initiation among patients diagnosed with tuberculosis in a tertiary care hospital of Puducherry: A randomized controlled trial
Author(s) -
Marie Gilbert Majella,
Pruthu Thekkur,
Ajay Kumar,
P Chinnakali,
Vinod Kumar Saka,
Gautam Roy
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of postgraduate medicine/journal of postgraduate medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.405
H-Index - 52
eISSN - 0972-2823
pISSN - 0022-3859
DOI - 10.4103/jpgm.jpgm_1105_20
Subject(s) - medicine , referral , randomized controlled trial , tertiary referral hospital , randomization , tuberculosis , confidence interval , pediatrics , emergency medicine , physical therapy , family medicine , retrospective cohort study , pathology
In India, about one third of tuberculosis (TB) patients diagnosed at tertiary hospitals are missed during a referral to peripheral health institutes for treatment. To address this, we assessed whether mobile voice call reminders to TB patients after diagnosis at a tertiary hospital decrease the proportion of "pretreatment loss to follow-up" (PTLFU), compared with the conventional paper-based referral.