Abstract:

Diagnosis and clinical characters of 369 suspected asymptomatic tuberculosis patients without any symptoms from the Fifth People’s Hospital in Puyang, Henan, between January 2011 and January 2016 were retrospectively analyzed. Of the 369 patients, 267 (72.36%) were suspected active TB, and 102 (27.64%) were suspected non-active TB; 275 were male (74.53%), 94 were female (25.47%); and mainly at the age of 13-40 years (68.83% (254/369)). The diagnosis methods were as follows: the physical examination after the entrance examination (49.32% (182/369)), the lung examination because of other diseases (20.60% (76/369)), the Staff Physical Examination (18.70% (69/369)), the Prisoners’ Physical Examination (11.38% (42/369)). According to CT scan, single small patchy, sprouts, nodular shadows and nodular, punctate calcification shadows were 55.83% (206/369), the unilateral shadow was 67.21% (248/369), the upper lung shadow was 73.98% (273/369), and the patchy and hole shadow was 7.59% (28/369). Patients with positive sputum smear acid-fast bacillus (AFB) accounted for 8.67% (32/369), smear-negative and culture-negative cases were 329 (89.16%), smear-positive and culture-positive cases were 32 (8.67%), and smear-negative and culture-positive cases were 8 (2.17%). Non-TB mycobacteria and drug-resistant bacteria were not found. Secondary TB accounted for 73.98% (273/369). There was no hematogenous disseminated pulmonary TB. The 267 patients diagnosed as suspected active TB and 26 (25.49% (26/102)) patients diagnosed as suspected non-active TB were diagnosed as active TB after a chest CT re-examination. The 293 patients were treated with normative anti-tuberculosis drugs, after 2 months, the lesions were clearly absorbed and the cavity reducton rate was 57.68% (169/293), and the conversion rate from smear-positive to smear-negative was 82.35% (28/34), the conversion rate from culture-positive to culture-negative was 77.50% (31/40); after 6 months, 47.78% (140/293) of the lesions were fully absorbed and the cavity closure rate was 100.00% (28/28), the conversion rate of smear-positive to smear-negative was 100.00% (34/34). with Asymptomatic pulmonary tuberculosis patientswere mainly diagnosed based on physical examination. The chest CT scan plays a certain part in diagnosing and judging whether the lesions changes for better or not after treatment.

Key words: Tuberculosis,pulmonary, Asymptomatic infections, Physical examination, Disease attri-butes, Diagnostic techniques and procedures, Discriminant analysis