ASSESSMENT OF TUBERCULOSIS RELAPSES DURING THE NEW CORONAVIRUS INFECTION PANDEMIC

Abstract

With the pandemic of a new coronavirus infection, the relevance of tuberculosis as a disease is not diminished. Against the backdrop of the pandemic, deaths from TB are predicted to increase for a number of reasons, one of them being an increase in early and late relapses, which are important in the epidemiology of TB. This is due to the fact that relapses of respiratory TB are much
more severe and characterized by more severe clinical and radiological manifestations of the disease compared to the newly detected process. The causes of relapses remain poorly understood. During the study, the outpatient records of 122 patients who were observed in SPB PTD 8 during 2013–2022 were studied. The social status of the patients varied, allowing them to be divided into three groups: homeless persons, other socially maladapted persons with registration in the Central District, and socially adapted persons. The socially adapted comprised 44% and the socially disadapted 66%, including homeless people, who comprised 59% of all socially adapted and 33% of all those surveyed. The incarceration rate was 25%. There was a significant aggravation in the structure of diagnoses after relapse, with a shift towards forms of tuberculosis prone to progression and generalization, with a predominance of destructive forms and increase in drug resistance. Almost absent among relapses was a favourable form such as focal tuberculosis, which was in second place in the structure of diagnoses before relapse. Disseminated tuberculosis occupied this place in the structure of post relapse diagnoses. Among relapses in individuals who had had a new coronavirus infection, early relapses predominated. The leading place in structure of concomitant pathology in investigated patients with relapses belonged to diseases of cardiovascular system and chronic nonspecific lung diseases.