Respiratory tuberculosis in children and adolescents: Assessment of radiological severity pattern and age-related changes within two decades.

Introduction: Despite the global decline of tuberculosis (TB), the annual risk of TB infection in children from developing countries remains high. Giving the global and regional epidemiological context in the past 20 years and a recent classification, dividing childhood TB into severe and non-severe disease, our aim was to find possible differences regarding disease severity in the pediatric population, as assessed by chest radiography (CXR) over 2 decades.

Materials And Method: A retrospective analysis of CXRs from newly confirmed respiratory TB patients was performed at the Pediatric Pulmonology Department of a tertiary-care university hospital that acts as a referral TB center in Transylvania.

[The child in tuberculosis hotbeds].

The city of Cluj-Napoca and the Cluj County, once situated in the comfortable zone of tuberculosis incidence, below the country, average, have registered a permanent and alarming increase in the both adult and child incidence of tuberculosis the last 5 years, which made us find the analysis of the phenomenon useful and constructive--having in view children mainly. Therefore we started to study all the adult bacillary hotbeds, bacteriologically confirmed in the city (150, totaling 172 cases) and having in contact between 1995-2000 with 280 children; superposing period of the 1995-2000. Antituberculosis National Programme reviewed in 1997.