[Clinical manifestations of tuberculosis in children and adolescents]

Clinical manifestations of tuberculosis in children and adolescents living in the Tumen region during 1984-1989 are analysed. Out of 432 of the patients, local forms of tuberculous infection were detected in 79.4% and pneumonia in 4.4% of the cases, while all the rest children proved to be just infected. The most prevailing among the pulmonary forms of the disease was intrathoracic lymphatic tuberculosis (52.3%) and among the non-pulmonary ones--tuberculous meningitis (3.5%). A complicated course of a tuberculous process was registered in 37.3% of the cases, especially in 2/3 of the patients with intrathoracic lymphatic tuberculosis (mainly of a bronchial type) as a consequence, in a number of cases, of the absence of BCG vaccination and the presence of tuberculous contact. Bronchoscopy undertaken in 244 children and adolescents made it possible to discover active changes in the bronchial mucosa in the first 1-2 months of therapy.