THE PECULIARITIES OF DETECTION AND DIAGNOSIS OF TUBERCULOSIS IN CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS

Objectives. To assess the peculiarities of diagnosis and clinical course of tuberculosis in children and adolescents. Material and methods. Retrospective analysis of outpatient records of children and adolescents with tuberculosis in Vitebsk region during the period from 2016 to 2020 was made. Results. In the tuberculous disease structure in children and adolescents, pulmonary tuberculosis (infiltrative pulmonary tuberculosis) prevails. In the majority of cases, tuberculosis was diagnosed during adolescence. Almost all of the sick had close family contact with tuberculosis patients. The medical risk group included 25% of patients. In patients with infiltrative pulmonary tuberculosis, symptoms and changes in the total blood count were observed only in the phase of disintegration and seeding. Bacteriological excreters made up 75% of cases. More than half of children and adolescents with tuberculosis had multidrug resistance of mycobacterium tuberculosis. Immunodiagnosing plays an important role in the detection of tuberculosis in children and adolescents. Among the sick children, only extrapulmonary forms of tuberculosis were recorded. Conclusions. Most often, tuberculosis in children and adolescents affects the respiratory organs and is asymptomatic or oligosymptomatic. 75% of patients were bacteria discharging persons, more than half of them having multidrug resistance. Family contact is of great importance in tuberculosis in children and adolescents. Doctors of all specialties need to have phthisiatric alertness in relation to patients with diseases of various localization resistant to nonspecific therapy, especially to persons with chronic diseases and to those who contact with patients suffering from tuberculosis. In case of ineffective antibiotic therapy, it is necessary to take the material for the study and verification of tuberculous infection and to carry out immunodiagnosing of tuberculosis.