Discordance between patient and clinician reports of adverse reactions to MDR-TB treatment

An urban out-patient clinic in Durban, South Africa, providing community-based treatment for drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB).

To describe concordance between patient report and clinician documentation of adverse drug reactions (ADRs) to treatment for multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB).

ADRs were documented by interview using an 18-item symptom checklist and medical record data abstraction during a cross-sectional parent study with 121 MDR-TB patients, 75% of whom were co-infected with the human immunodeficiency virus. Concordance was analyzed using Cohen's κ statistic, Gwet's agreement coefficient (AC) 1, and McNemar's test.

ADRs were reported much more frequently in patient interviews (μ = 8.6) than in medical records (μ = 1.4). Insomnia was most common (67% vs. 2%), followed by peripheral neuropathy (65% vs. 18%), and confusion (61 vs. 4%). κ scores were very low, with the highest degree of concordance found in hearing loss (κ = 0.23), which was the only ADR not found to be significantly different between the two data sources (P = 0.34).

Our study showed a lack of concordance between patient report and clinician documentation of ADRs. These findings indicate the need for improved documentation of ADRs to better reflect patients' experiences during MDR-TB treatment. These data have important implications for country-level pharmacovigilance programs that rely on clinician documentation of ADRs for MDR-TB policy formation.