Ameet Vasantrao Khatawkar, Nagaraj Talikoti, Prashant Kumar Malkiwadeyar , Md. Juned, Veeresh Basavaraj Hubballi, Ganeshgouda Majigoudra , Mohith H. N, Shravan Kumar Potkar
BACKGROUND: Tuberculosis being a global burden, there is a need for early detection and treatment of pulmonary TB. CBNAAT is used as rapid diagnostic test and it is a highly efficient. Twenty five percent of global annual TB incidents occur in India making it the highest Tuberculosis burdened country. We wanted to study the role of CBNAAT in early the diagnosis of tuberculosis/multi-drug resistant tuberculosis in HIV seropositive subjects and compare the detection of M. tuberculosis in sputum by CBNAAT with conventional sputum microscopy in pulmonary tuberculosis.
METHODS:Patients who presented with persistent cough for more than two weeks, chest X ray suggestive of PTB were subjected to sputum examination by routine microscopy and cartridge based nucleic acid amplification technique (CBNAAT).
RESULTS: CBNAAT had a sensitivity of 100%, specificity of 79.31%, PPV of 41.94% and NPV of 100% and diagnostic accuracy of 82%, whereas sputum microscopy showed only 41.94% sensitivity.
CONCLUSIONS: CBNAAT helps in early detection of tuberculosis, takes less than 2 hours, and is more sensitive in detecting tuberculosis in HIV sero-positive cases compared to sputum microscopy and reduces the false negative rates. Drug resistance can concomitantly be identified.
