[Criteria for clinical recovery and the evaluation of the efficiency of treatment in patients with respiratory tuberculosis in Moscow].

Criteria for clinical cure have been analyzed and the efficiency of treatment evaluated in patients with respiratory tuberculosis in Moscow. If today's official criteria for the efficiency of treatment have been ascertained to preserve in treating the first detected patients, a phthisiological service will completely lose an objective control of this section of work in several years. The only criterion that gives some idea of the results of treatment in first detected patients is currently to transfer them to dispensary register group III. However, when the results of interim treatment stages are unknown, conditions are created for utter arbitrariness in the time of the transfer (this happens at present). It is necessary to hold today's existing major criteria (cessation of bacterial isolation and closure of decay cavities) for evaluating the efficiency of treatment in first detected patients (who are largely inpatients) and to add one more criterion (disappearance of Xray signs of active tuberculosis manifestations); moreover, the magnitude of major or minor residual tuberculous changes should be, of course, taken into account after a basic course of chemotherapy.