Trend and determinants of tuberculosis treatment outcome in a tertiary hospital in Southeast Nigeria.

Introduction: Nigeria ranked 7th among the high TB burden nations globally and second most endemic in Africa. There are several highly effective interventions available for tuberculosis control. Operational challenges have been reported to interfere with the success of these interventions. This review was conducted to ascertain the treatment outcome using the Directly Observed Short Course Strategy implemented in the hospital.

Methods: A retrospective review of the Tuberculosis treatment was conducted in former Ebonyi State Teaching Hospital and Federal Teaching Hospital from 2008 to 2014 as part of the departmental critique of patients' clinical care and tuberculosis control activities. Using the facility's TB treatment register, information on the patient's demography, clinical characteristics and treatment outcome was extracted. The data were analyzed using Epi Info version 7.2. Frequencies and proportions were calculated.

Results: A total of 1070 cases were reviewed with majority 491 (45.9%) belonging to 25-44 years age group. There were 585 (54.7%) males and 68 (11.6%) paediatrics. Pulmonary tuberculosis (667, 62.3%) was the most common presentation. Among those that did sputum smear AFB, 53.2% were smear negative. In all, 91.2% of the cases were treatment naïve, 59.1% were HIV negative at beginning of their treatment while 8% had unknown HIV status. Of the treatment outcome, 40.5% were classified as treatment completed, 16.0% cured, 17.4% of the cases defaulted while 14.1% of the cases died on treatment. These patients were often referred from primary and secondary level hospitals.

Conclusions: The cure rate was very poor and treatment default rate high. The high default rate could be due to the referral nature of the hospital. The treatment success rate of 56.5% is still far below the national target of 85% treatment success rate for effective tuberculosis control. An operational research is recommended to elicit the root causes of low treatment success rate and high patient default rate.