Identification of Risk Factors in Multidrug Resistant Tuberculosis

Although the multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) epidemic is a very recent problem, many studies have attempted to understand it. There are approximately 500.000 MDRTB cases worldwide. Many risk factors such as physician, patient, drugs, and national TB programmes contributes to previous history of TB treatment. Identification of the risk factors may help the future strategies to decrease the MDR-TB epidemic. Retrospective study was conducted using medical record and questionnaire for 50 MDR-TB patient of Persahabatan Hospital treated for MDR-TB during Agustus 2009 to Agustus 2010. Questionnaires were given in September to October 2010. This study found that 92% of MDR-TB patients have history of previous treatment more than once. The majority of cases were chronic case/failure treatment of second categories. More than half patient did not get the proper TB treatment eventhough they had good communication, information, and education about TB from the physician. Early and more education of associated factors especially compliance is important to patient and recent data have suggested that national TB programmes that use existing drugs efficiently can postpone and even reverse the MDR-TB epidemicKeywords: MDR-TB, risk factors