The international journal of tuberculosis and lung disease : the official journal of the International Union against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease
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Int. J. Tuberc. Lung Dis. · Feb 2000
Using treatment failure under effective directly observed short-course chemotherapy programs to identify patients with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis.
Public ambulatory care centers in three districts of northern metropolitan Lima, Peru. ⋯ In this setting, treatment failure on DOT-SCC is strongly predictive of active MDR-TB. Because of existing local drug resistance patterns in northern Lima, 89.3% of MDR-TB patients identified as treatment failures will receive ineffective therapy with two or fewer secondary TB drugs if they are given the five-drug empiric retreatment regimen endorsed by the World Health Organization. Further short-course chemotherapy for these patients would only serve to amplify ominous existing drug resistance patterns.