| EPIDEMIOLOGICAL BEHAVIOR OF PULMONARY TUBERCULOSIS PATIENTS SEEN AT AN UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL |
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Chan Sae Lee |
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Department of Internal Medicine, Catholic Medical College, Seoul, Korea |
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| Abstract |
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The records of 1,200 patients with pulmonary tuberculosis seen at University hospital of Catholic Medical College fro 3 years from September 1961 to August 1963 has been analysed to study the epidemiological behavior of pulmonary tuberculosis patient with a purpose of understanding the present status of tuberculosis control in Korea. 1. The incidence of pulmonary tuberculosis was 4% of total out-patient of Department of Internal Medicine during same period, and it was almost same rate with the presumptive incidence among general population. 2. There were considerably more male patients than Female patients with a rate of 67% male to 33% Female in contrast to the reversed ratio of 45% male to 55%female in total medical patients. 3. There were 33.1% of Minimal, 36.3% of Moderately Advanced, 20.4% of far advance cases according to USA-NTA classification. Baceriological study had been rather much neglected as a whole showing only 19.5% positive, 27.2% negative, and 53.3% no data. However in the patients who had been treated for more than 1 month as inpatient showed 62.8% positive 37.2% negative. 4. The patients who had been innitaly diagnosed at this hospital without previous tuberculosis history were only 5% of total tuberculosis patients and only 28.3% of those patients received the treatment for more than 3 months. 5. One who continued more than 5 months treatment were only 5.7% of total patients and one who had admission treatment were 18.1% of total. However one who had more than one months admission treatment were only 3.5% of total. The author believed that the reason of such phenomenon of having an inadequate treatment was due to economic condition of the patients rather than because this hospital was not properly equipped for tuberculous patients 6. To study the moment of hospital visit by the patients the author divided the patients according to their chief complaints in 4 groups; A for the group with remarkable respiratory complaints, B for the group with vague general constitutional complaints of chronic diseases, C for the group with non-respiratory complaints such as gastrointestinal, D for the group with hemostatic complaints. There were 56.4% of A, 17.9% of B, 8.1% of C and 17.6% of D as a whole but there were more D group(27.8%) among hospitalized patients and it shows that the patients would not visit a hospital or be admitted unless emergent situations raised. 7. Judaing from above results, it is clear that the behavior of the patients with pulmonary tuberculosis seen at university hospital were very irregular and unsatisfactory. For this reason the author believes that it would be impossible to control the tuberculosis patient unless there are adequate facilities of admission treatment and economic aide for the patient although the unawareness of acute problems of tuberculosis among the people and the financial condition of this government seems to force adaption of an ambulatory treatment system only to economise the governmental expenses. |
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