Pre-Treatment Loss To Follow-Up During Course Of Tuberculosis: A Systematic Review

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Sakshi Ghildiyal , Pratiksha Sharma , Rashmi Rodrigues , Mandeep Kumar Arora

Abstract

A critical problem in the fight against tuberculosis (TB) is “loss to follow-up (LTFU)”, which can result in treatment resistance and TB outbreaks. Countries, places, years, and institutions have various percentages of LTFU patients. In some locations, the proportion of LTFU patients is so high that it is almost equal to 50% of all patients. This review details underlying issues such as age, gender, education, place of residency, financial factors, migration, and societal stigma. Each time a treatment program is developed, these elements must be taken into account. There have been suggestions for certain interventions that might be able to address the LTFU issue. Given these issues, an aggressive approach should be taken to minimize the incidence of LTFU patients to zero.

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