%0 Journal Article
%T Latent tuberculosis in nursing professionals of a Brazilian hospital
%A Karen Severo
%A Julia Oliveira
%A Marcelo Carneiro
%A Andr¨Ļia Valim
%A Eliane Krummenauer
%A Lia Possuelo
%J Journal of Occupational Medicine and Toxicology
%D 2011
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/1745-6673-6-15
%X Tuberculosis (TB), mainly caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, is one of the most ancient and neglected diseases of humanity[1]. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), one third of the world's population, around 1.7 billion people, are infected with TB [2].Health-care workers (HCWs) present a higher risk of infection compared to the general population. A longer period of employment as health professional, patient's delayed diagnosis of the disease, professional category, certain work locations such as inpatient TB facility, laboratory, internal medicine, and emergency facilities, in addition to the lack of proper respiratory protection (N95 masks), are factors that can contribute to the infection [3-5].The adoption of measures to control the transmission of the disease in the work environment can be helpful in decreasing the incidence of the disease in the population. Declaring that a disease is an occupational one is an important warning, so that specific control measures can be taken in order to avoid its dissemination among institution employees [4,6].The risk of infection will depend on many factors such as: amount of bacilli expelled by the patient; duration of patient's infectiousness; bacillus concentration in the air, determined by ventilation; exposure time and individual susceptibility. There are no safe levels of exposure to TB. Currently, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) acknowledge that in centers where appropriate control measures are applied the risk of contracting TB among HCWs is comparable to that in the community where they live. TST testing is still a low-cost strategy for the screening of health-care workers infected by M. tuberculosis.There are few data about the prevalence of M. tuberculosis infection among HCWs in south Brazil, hence, the aim of the present study is to estimate the prevalence of latent TB infection (LTBI) and to evaluate the characteristics related t
%K Tuberculosis
%K Tuberculin Skin Test
%K Health-Care Workers
%U http://www.occup-med.com/content/6/1/15