Surgical treatment of multiresistant lung tuberculosis.

Abstract

Drug resistance has become a major problem in the treatment of tuberculosis. Pulmonary resection in combination with chemotherapy appears to be an effective measure for the treatment of multi-drug resistant pulmonary tuberculosis. A retrospective review was performed of the medical and laboratory findings of 28 patients with multi-drug resistant tuberculosis who underwent pulmonary resection for pulmonary tuberculosis between January 1990 and December 2000 at La Maria Hospital, Medellín. Twenty-one of them had medical therapy before surgery; 14 patients underwent upper lobectomy and 10 patients pneumonectomy). The AFB negative sputum conversion rate was 88.9% (25/27) after surgery, during an average of 6 weeks. Bacteriological relapses were confirmed in 6 of 27, 4 of these 6 had AFB negative sputum. Twenty-eight patients had medical therapy after surgery. For selected patients, pulmonary resection in combination with chemotherapy should be considered an effective measure for treatment of multi-drug resistant pulmonary tuberculosis.