24 Feb Delays and loss to follow-up before treatment of drug-resistant tuberculosis following implementation of Xpert MTB/RIF in South Africa: A retrospective cohort study

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Authored by: Helen Cox, Lindy Dickson-Hall, Norbert Ndjeka, Anja van’t Hoog, Alison Grant, Frank Cobelens, Wendy Stevens, Mark Nicol.
In: PLoS Med 14(2): e1002238. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1002238

South Africa has a large burden of rifampicin-resistant tuberculosis (RR-TB), with 18,734 patients diagnosed in 2014. The number of diagnosed patients has increased substantially with the introduction of the Xpert MTB/RIF test, used for tuberculosis (TB) diagnosis for all patients with presumptive TB. Routine aggregate data suggest a large treatment gap (pre-treatment loss to follow-up) between the numbers of patients with laboratory-confirmed RR-TB and those reported to have started second-line treatment. We aimed to assess the impact of Xpert MTB/RIF implementation on the delay to treatment initiation and loss to follow-up before second-line treatment for RR-TB across South Africa.

http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1002238