Are tuberculosis patients in a tertiary care hospital in Hyderabad, India being managed according to national guidelines?

A tertiary health care facility (Government General and Chest hospital) in Hyderabad, India. To assess a) the extent of compliance of specialists to standardized national (RNTCP) tuberculosis management guidelines and b) if patients on discharge from hospital were being appropriately linked up with peripheral health facilities for continuation of anti-Tuberculosis (TB) treatment. A descriptive study using routine programme data and involving all TB patients admitted to inpatient care from 1(st) January to 30(th) June, 2010. There were a total of 3120 patients admitted of whom, 1218 (39%) required anti-TB treatment. Of these 1104 (98%) were treated with one of the RNTCP recommended regimens, while 28 (2%) were treated with non-RNTCP regimens. The latter included individually tailored MDR-TB treatment regimens for 19 patients and adhoc regimens for nine patients. A total of 957 (86%) patients were eventually discharged from the hospital of whom 921 (96%) had a referral form filled for continuing treatment at a peripheral health facility. Formal feedback from peripheral health facilities on continuation of TB treatment was received for 682 (74%) patients. In a tertiary health facility with specialists the great majority of TB patients are managed in line with national guidelines. However a number of short-comings were revealed and measures to rectify these are discussed.