Tuberculous disease in Pediatrics: ten years’ experience

Objective: to describe tuberculosis in Pediatrics from 2005-2015 in Navarra, attending to demographic, clinic, radiologic, microbiologic, treatment and evolution data.

Material and methods: a retrospective descriptive study based on data from the clinical history of patients treated between 2005 and 2015.

Results: we studied 52 patients, 57.7% men, 42.3% women, age: 4 years old. 38.5% are immigrant and 61.5% children from immigrants. During the last 10 years, the distribution has been homogeneous, despite of one outbreak in 2011. 69.2% had symptoms when diagnosed. In 63.5% we knew index case. The most frequent clinical form is the pulmonary one. Simple Rx was pathological in 86,5% of cases and CT was applied in 82,7% (being diagnostic in 95’3% of them). 71,2% of microbiological cultures were positive for Mycobacterium tuberculosis (92,3% of them were sensible to M. tuberculosis sensible to standard treatment). All patients were treated with four drugs and then two up to 6-12 months. Follow up: 84.6% healed, 13.5% healed but there were sequelae and one of our patients died.

Conclusion: tuberculosis represents a problem in children health. Pulmonary tuberculosis is the most frequent clinical form. Normally, it evolves favourably but morbimortality exists. It is essential to consider tuberculosis in order to have an early diagnosis and treatment.