[Improvement on chest X-ray findings after two months of antituberculous treatment]

To detect factors that affected the improvement on chest X-ray findings after two months of antituberculous treatment.

We assessed the chest X-ray findings of 72 patients with sputum culture positive to determine whether findings showed improvement after two months treatment with antituberculous drugs, and we compared the differences in disease status between the improved group (I group) and the non-improved group (N group).

The I group consisted of 43 pts. and the N group consisted of 29 pts. The mean age in the N group was higher than that in the I group. There were no differences in sex or body weight. Though the mortality rate in the N group was 20.7% and that in the I group was 9.3%, it was not statistically significant. The erythema size of tuberculin skin test in the I group was larger than that in the N group. There were no differences in the type or extent of lesion on Gakkai classification between the two groups, and there were no remarkable blood biochemistry findings in either group. Though there were no differences in the rates of side effects or discontinuation of treatment, the incidence rate of complications in the N group was higher than that ih the I group.

Older patients with complications and smaller erythema size of tuberculin skin test reaction showed a delay in chest X-ray findings improvement after two months of antituberculous drug treatment.