Epidemiological Assessment of Extrapulmonary Tuberculosis in Qom Province during 2008-2015 (Iran)

Tuberculosis is an important infectious disease, which is generally classified into two types of pulmonary and extrapulmonary. Today, extrapulmonary tuberculosis accounts for about one-third of cases of tuberculosis. Due to the increasing trend of the incidence of extrapulmonary tuberculosis in the country, this study was performed with the aim of epidemiological assessment of extrapulmonary tuberculosis.
This study was performed as a descriptive-analytical cross-sectional study on patients with extrapulmonary tuberculosis in Qom Province during 2008-2015. The required information was extracted from the records of tuberculosis patients. Data analysis was performed using Chi-square and independent t-test.
Out of the total cases of tuberculosis (1476 subjects), 463 suubjects (31.37%) had extrapulmonary tuberculosis. The incidence rate of extrapulmonary tuberculosis was 6.38, 5.35, 2.61, 4.26, 4.71, 5.9, 5.8, and 6.71% per 100000 from 2008 to 2015. The mean age of patients with extrapulmonary tuberculosis was estimated to be 36.43±19.47 years. Also, extrapulmonary tuberculosis was higher in women than men, and the sex ratio (male to female), was 0.9. The most commonly affected organs were respectively lymph nodes (30.5%), pleura (18.4%) and bone (14.7%).
The findings of this study indicated the increasing trend of incidence of extrapulmonary tuberculosis in Qom province in recent years, and lymph nodes tuberculosis was the most common extrapulmonary tuberculosis among the patients.