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Paediatric Pulmonology and Allergology
2003 April, Vol. VI, No. 1 (pp.2111-2123)
British thoracic society Guidelines on tuberculosis and atypical mycobacterial infection
Anne H. Thomson
Tuberculosis in not a major problem in the UK, but the present trends of it's increasing spread is obvious. The total number of notified cases of tuberculosis has increased from 1987 (n=50850) to 1998 (n=6087). The bulk of the increase of tuberculosis cases was in minority groups from the Indian or African subcontinents. A matter of concern is concomitant HIV infection as well as drug resistance of tuberculosis mycobacteria. In 1998 in UK 3% of tuberculosis cases were HIV infected. Drug resistance of tuberculosis mycobacteria is not a frequent problem, but in 1998 6.1% of isolates were isoniazid resistant, and 1.3% were multi drug resistant. The aim of this article is to introduce British Thoracic Society Guidelines on tuberculosis and atypical Mycobacterial infection. The article review British tuberculosis policy and measures of state tuberculosis services on control, prevention, chemotherapy, management of tuberculosis, applied to children. Tuberculosis treatment regimes and prevention strategies have been established with regards to clinical type of the disease, concomitant disease, HIV infection, and drug resistance of tuberculosis mycobacteria. The last part of the article introduce atypical mycobacterial infection presentations and British guidelines on diagnosis and treatment of atypical mycobacterial infection in immunocompetent as well in immunocompromised patients.