Pulmonary resection for patients with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis: systematic review and meta-analysis

Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) has become an emerging global public health crisis. Several studies have suggested that pulmonary resection has efficacy in the treatment of MDR-TB. A systematic review of the available therapeutic studies was conducted to determine the treatment outcome among patients with MDR-TB who underwent pulmonary resection.

To evaluate pulmonary resection for MDR-TB, a random-effect meta-analysis of the available studies was used to assess the overall treatment outcome. Subgroup analyses were also conducted by separating studies based on each characteristic independently.

After screening 4996 articles, 15 clinical reports with a mean of 63 patients per report met the inclusion criteria. Analysis of the studies showed that the estimated pooled treatment success rate of pulmonary resection for patients with MDR-TB was 84% [95% confidence interval (CI) 78%-89%]. The rates of failure, relapse, death and default were 6% (95% CI 4%-8%), 3% (95% CI 1%-4%), 5% (95% CI 2%-8%) and 3% (95% CI 1%-5%), respectively. The proportion of patients treated successfully did not differ significantly on the basis of any of the individual study characteristics.

Substantial heterogeneity in the study characteristics prevented a more conclusive determination of what factors had the greatest effect on the proportion of patients that achieve treatment success and limited the validity of this analysis. Some important variables, including patient HIV status, were inconsistently reported between studies. These results underscore the importance of strong patient support and treatment follow-up systems to develop successful MDR-TB treatment programmes.