Resultados de un estudio de Contactos de pacientes con Tuberculosis en la provincia de Toledo

objective: the objective of this study is to determine the epidemiological characteristics of contacts of persons diagnosed with tuberculosis, the indication for primary or/and secondary prophylaxis and the degree of compliance to the study protocol. design: descriptive, cross-sectional study. participants: people who had a tuberculosis contact and screened in a preventive medicine department of the toledo health area during the years 2007 and 2008. results: we recruited 419 contacts, with a mean age of 33.6 years of whom 51.1% were male and 17.4% were immigrants with an average stay of 5.3 years in spain. the most frequent risk factors in our sample were: smoking (27%), alcohol (11.2%) and diabetes mellitus (1.2%); 8.8% reported previous contact with tb patients, 11% having had prior ppd, 6.7% had received bcg vaccination and 3.3% reported having previously received chemoprophylaxis. only 1.7% of the contacts reported symptoms compatible with tuberculosis. regarding the type of contact, 6.4% of them were contacts in the work place (or working contacts) (93.6% were not related with the work place). intensity varied (intimate 10.9%; over 6 hours daily 32.9%; daily but less than 6 hours a day 22.4% and more sporadic 33.7%). the most frequent sites of disease in those diagnosed with active disease were pulmonary (78.4%) (pleural 15%) and lymph nodes (3.6%). at the end of the contact tracing using our protocol 42.5% of the contacts required primary chemoprophylaxis, 11% secondary prophylaxis and 1% underwent further studies for active disease; 1.7% .of patients did not complete the protocol. conclusions: this study demonstrates the need to screen tuberculosis contacts since a high percentage of them require chemoprophylaxis. the percentage of patients who did not complete the protocol in our study was inferior to that found in other publications, which probably determined the low percentage of contacts who were found to have active disease.