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Are three sputum acid-fast bacillus smears necessary for discontinuing tuberculosis isolation?
Philip Mathew1, Yen-Hong Kuo, Bindu Vazirani
1Department of Medicine, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, New Brunswick, New Jersey 08901, USA. phillip.mathew@mdsps.com
Journal of Clinical Microbiology
|August 31, 2002
Abstract:
To evaluate the efficacy of three sputum acid-fast bacillus (AFB) smears to rule out pulmonary tuberculosis, sputum AFB smear and culture results were analyzed at two university-affiliated teaching hospitals. The negative predictive value of the smear increased by only 0.2% on days 2 and 3 each, indicating that in low-prevalence populations, there is limited value in requiring three negative sputum AFB smears before discontinuing tuberculosis isolation.