Chest X-Ray Findings Comparison between Multi-drug-resistant Tuberculosis and Drug-sensitive Tuberculosis

Imaging has a big role in tuberculosis (TB) diagnosis and chest X-ray is preferable because it is available in primary health care and can point out the location, area, and morphology of lesions, such as cavity, consolidation, pleural effusions, and fibrosis. We aimed to compare the chest X-ray findings in multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB) and in drug-sensitive TB (DS-TB) cases.

This is a retrospective cross-sectional study which compares chest X-ray findings of two groups of patients, involving 183 DS-TB patients and 183 MDR-TB patients. Radiologic findings that we analyzed were infiltrate, consolidation, cavity, ground glass opacity, fibrosis, bronchiectasis, calcification, node, atelectasis, bullae, emphysema, and other nonlung parenchymal findings.

MDR-TB group have 177 (96%) patients with large lesions, 6 (4%) with medium lesions, and no small lesions. DS-TB group have 55 (30%) patients with small lesions, 78 (43%) with medium lesions, and 50 (27%) with large lesions. Active TB lesions in the forms of infiltrate and ground-glass opacity were more dominant in DS-TB group, whereas consolidation, cavity, fibrosis, bronchiectasis, calcification, node, atelectasis, bullae, emphysema, and other nonlung parenchymal findings, were more dominant in MDR-TB.

There were significant differences in chest X-ray findings between MDR-TB and DS-TB in terms of lesion size and morphology. Recognition of chest X-ray findings could help the physician to differentiate patient with suspected MDR-TB.