Symptoms in Smear Positive Pulmonary Tuberculosis Patients in Khok Samrong Hospital, Lop Buri Province

Abstract

Pulmonary tuberculosis is a major infection of Thailand. Major symptoms that brought patients into the hospital include cough, fever and weight loss. This infectious disease easily spreads from each other through breathing and leads to death in some cases. The objective of this study was to investigate symptoms and the first diagnosis of smear positive pulmonary tuberculosis patients in Khok Samrong Hospital, Lop Buri Province. The researcher conducted a retrospective study by collecting data from patient medical records from 1 October 2013 to 30 September 2017. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, including frequency, percentage, mode, median, minimum and maximum. The results of this study based on patient medical record, from 273 smear positive pulmonary tuberculosis patients. Major symptoms were cough (71.8%), having sputum (42.9%), fever (41.8%), weight loss (28.9%), fatigue (24.5%), dyspnea (22.0%), anorexia (12.1%), chest pain (5.5%), and headache (2.6%). For the first diagnosis, higher possibility of TB diagnosis was found among patients with chronic cough, chronic fever, and weight loss more than 1.5 kg in a month.  However, if patients had no symptoms such as chronic cough, chronic fever, weight loss, but presented with other symptoms such as cough, fatigue, chest pain, headache, the more likely they were diagnosed at the first visit as another disease. This causes delayed treatment and higher chance for infectious disease transmission in the community before being diagnosed as pulmonary tuberculosis. Therefore, the suggestion is that the medical personnel should always be aware of the potential for developing pulmonary tuberculosis in all patients visiting the hospital, particularly the cases with cough regardless of how long the symptoms have occurred.