Efficiency of Directly Observed Treatment Short-course (DOTS) Strategy in treating patients with smear positive pulmonary tuberculosis

Timely diagnosis and effective treatment of tuberculosis infected patients, are the key elements for decreasing infection transmission to healthy population and the key to achieving the goal of disease elimination. This study aimed to study the efficiency of DOTS in treating patients with smear positive pulmonary tuberculosis in Mazandaran province. The present cohort was carried out on 683 patients with smear positive pulmonary tuberculosis registered in prevention and combat of diseases unit of Mazandaran University of medical sciences in the period of 2004-2009. Of them 362 were in DOTS group whereas, 321 were in self-administered group. After investigating the characteristics of the contextual variables and the homogeneity of groups, treatment results were compared by chi square and poison regression. Analysis was carried out by stata 11. 51.9 percent of infected patients were female. The mean age of patients was 49.73±21.57. No significant difference was observed by age according to gender (p=0.8). Treatment success and failure in DOTS group was 92 and 8 percent respectively, however, in the self-administered treatment group the success and failure in treatment were 83.2 and 16.8 percent respectively.Discussion and Treatment success in self-administered group was 2 percent lower than WHO’s target, however this figure was 7 percent higher than WHO’s target in DOTS group. If health centers treat all tuberculosis cases with DOTS, treatment success will reach to more than ninety percent, which goes beyond WHO’s target.