[Tuberculosis: diagnosis and incidence of resistance 1991/92]

In the past few years new diagnostic strategies have considerably cut down the turnaround time for detection, identification and susceptibility testing of mycobacteria. Highly sensitive methods (e.g., gene probes, PCR, gas liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry) will further improve rapid and accurate laboratory testing. They which all aim at a direct detection of mycobacteria in clinical specimens. In a brief survey conducted by the NZM/IMM susceptibility data of M. tuberculosis isolates in Switzerland were obtained from 14 laboratories. As expected, the great majority of the strains exhibit full sensitivity against the primary antituberculous drugs. The patterns as well as the percentages of resistance for the period between January 1991 to June 1992 do not differ significantly from the results obtained in an earlier investigation.