Abstract: Objective To understand the effect of patient delay and diagnosis delay of new smear positive tuberculosis (TB) cases and drug-resistance, and to provide scientific evidence for the development of drug-resistant TB control and prevention strategies.  Methods The typical survey method was adopted and 3 counties were selected from 3 provinces located in the eastern, middle and western areas in China. Three hundred and twenty-nine new smear positive TB patients registered during May 2010 to September 2010 were investigated with the questionnaire of the process of diagnosis and treatment of new smear positive patients designed by the research group, and 329 questionnaires were received with 100.0% effective rate. Sputum culture examination was applied for the sputum samples from 329 patients, drug susceptibility test of INH, RFP, EMB and S was used for those with positive sputum culture samples. Non-parametric test was used to compare the delay between drug-resistant patients and non-drug resistant patients. 0.05 was set as the criteria of statistical significance. Results The positive rate of sputum culture was 88.8%(292/329),the total drug-resistance rate was 12.7%(37/292), and the multidrug-resistance (MDR) rate was 2.8%(8/292). Total delay, patient delay and diagnosis delay for drug-resistant patients were 37 d (8-465 d), 15 d (0-462 d) and 12 d (0-218 d) respectively, and 38 d (1-597 d), 16 d (0-594 d) and 10 d (0-429 d) for non-resistant patients.There was no significant difference between drug-resistance and non-drug resistance on 3 kinds of delay (Z=0.377, 0.142, 0.069, P<0.05). Conclusion There is no inevitable relationship between delay and drug-resistance.

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