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Patient factors associated with ‘loss to follow-up’ after starting TB therapy within the UK
Completion of a full treatment programme for the management of tuberculosis is pivotal in achieving successful disease treatment and preventing development of drug resistant disease. In this study (Epidemiol Infect 2013;141:1223–1231), investigators compared characteristics of patients in the UK between 2001 and 2007 who completed TB therapy to those who were lost to follow-up. Factors associated with an increased risk of loss to follow-up included being male; adjusted odds ratio (aOR 1.29); having sputum smear-positive disease (aOR 1.25), and arriving in the UK within two years (aOR 3.58) particularly those of White ethnic origin (aOR 6.39).
The addition of C reactive protein (CRP) concentrations to clinical features improves predictive tools for diagnosing pneumonia in primary care
This Europe-wide study (BMJ 2013;346:f2450 doi:10.1136/bmj.f2450) of patients presenting to primary care with acute cough investigated the additional benefit of adding either CRP or procalcitonin concentrations to clinical features for predicting the diagnosis of pneumonia. Data from 2820 patients were analysed, and 140 (5%) were identified as having pneumonia. The optimal combination of clinical prediction items included absence of rhinorrhoea and presence …
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Competing interests None.
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Provenance and peer review Commissioned; internally peer reviewed.