[Lost opportunities for preventing tuberculosis and derived costs; comment]

We determined the extent to which opportunities for prevention were missed among patients with tuberculosis and the costs derived from the lack of prevention.

Descriptive study of patients with active tuberculosis were studied in the hospital ward of tuberculosis at the A. Marcide-Novoa Santos Centre (Ferrol, Spain), from September of 1991 to August of 1995. Risk factors to develop tuberculosis, vaccination with BCG, previous tuberculin skin test and previous history of drug prophylaxis or tuberculosis therapy were determined. Then, we determined whether they had undergone prevention procedures in accordance with current recommendations of the American Thoracic Society. An evaluation of the direct and indirect derived costs was carried out in patients with any missed opportunity for tuberculosis prevention.

Out of 433 studied patients, 167 (38.6%) got missed any opportunity for prevention. Out of 167, 29 patients (6.7%) did not complete a previous treatment; 9 (2.1%) did not complete drug prophylaxis; 12 (2.8%) with known previous positive tuberculin skin test and an indication for drug prophylaxis never received it, and 117 (27%) with known indications for screening never received a skin test. 62 patients (53%) with known exposure to active pulmonary tuberculosis, and 65 (55.6%) with predisposing medical conditions. From the missed opportunities for prevention we calculated some direct costs of 116,909,911 pesetas and some indirect costs derived from the absence to work (141.9 +/- 114.3 days) and from the death of 6 patients for tuberculosis.

A large percentage of missed opportunities to prevent the disease was found among patients with tuberculosis. This means a considerable expense that could have been avoided.