[Diagnosis and prevention of tuberculosis in hemodialysis patients. a new old problem?]

Patients with chronic renal failure undergoing hemodialysis are at increased risk of developing tuberculosis because of impaired cellular immunity. Most cases are due to reactivation of disease and are known to develop the complication of extrapulmonary tuberculosis more frequently than the general population, and this makes the disease difficult to diagnose, delaying the establishment of appropiate therapy. We evaluated 39 patients undergoing hemodialysis treatment in the course of a 3 year period, therewere. Tuberculosis control program was developed to evaluate all patients newly admitted to the renal dialysis program. All of the patients were skin-tested initially with use 2 U.I. tuberculin PPD RT23, and 16 patients had positive results. Three cases of tuberculosis -registered that developed in patients, and in exposed patients, 3 patients with negative test result 2 months later had positive test. No relationship was found between the results of the tests and age, sex, renal disease, other pathologies or previous tuberculosis and albumin figures. However, positive patients had higher levels of total leukocytes. The period from undergoing hemodialysis until mantoux testing was performed was lower in those patients who resulted positive: 9.4+/-13.6 months versus 32.9+/-39 months in negative patients. The use of mantoux testing is important as a sieve system in hemodialysis patients as long as is associated with other diagnosis techniques, detecting that way those cases at risk of developing tuberculosis and latting perform further studies and isoniacida prophylaxis. Establishing isoniacida prevention in hemodialysis patients can avoid the development of tuberculosis in patients at risk as well as prompt detection makes easier the establishment of right therapy.