title: Treatment outcomes of patients placed on treatment under directly observed therapy short-course (dots).
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Tuberculosis continues to be a pressing health problem in India. The Revised National Tuberculosis Programme (RNTCP), an application of Directly Observed Treatment Short-course (DOTS) in India, launched in 1997 needs continuous evaluation.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To study the outcomes of treatment among the patients put on DOTS under RNTCP in Chandigarh, UT. MATERIAL #ENTITYSTARTX00026;
  
  
  METHODS
  A Longitudinal study was conducted during 2004-2005 in 13 Microscopic centres (MC's) spread over 2 Tuberculosis Units (TU's) under District Tuberculosis Centre (DTC) in Union Territory (UT), Chandigarh. A sample of 265 respondents, selected by two-stage stratified random sampling technique, was recruited in the study cohort. Data analysis was done using SPSS-10 statistical software package.
  
  
  RESULTS
  For Category I and Category II patients, the Success rate was 98.6% and 90.4% respectively. The overall default rate was 1.1% and failure rate was 2.6%. For re-treatment cases, failure rate was higher i.e. 5.8%. The sputum conversion rate among the new smear positive cases was 93.8% at 3 months of treatment. For the re-treatment cases, spu-tum conversion rate at 3 months was 94.1%.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The study concludes that RNTCP is running successfully in UT Chandigarh, having high success rate and low default rate. The reasons for high failure rate should be explored in depth.
authors.affiliation: Deptt. of Community Medicine, Govt. Medical College, Chandigarh, India.
authors.forename: Gurpreet
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Kaur
authors.forename: N K
authors.initials: NK
authors.lastname: Goel
authors.forename: Dinesh
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Kumar
authors.forename: A K
authors.initials: AK
authors.lastname: Janmeja
authors.forename: H M
authors.initials: HM
authors.lastname: Swami
authors.forename: Meenu
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kalia