The prevalence of latent tuberculosis (TB) infection in healthcare staff of Khorramabad Ashayer hospital in 2015

Despite of extensive global control programs of tuberculosis, the prevalence of this disease in underdeveloped and developing countries still remains high.Also the prevalence of latent TB infection in hospital staff has a particular importance. In a descriptive-analytic study conducted from March to June 2015 in Khorramabad Ashayer hospital on employees, after taking history and consent of the employees, a Tuberculin Skin Test (TST) was conducted and the results were read 72-48 hours later. Also to study booster effect in patients with negative TST, test was repeated one week later. The criteria for diagnosis of latent tuberculosis was tuberculin test with induration greater than 10 mm. Totally of 160 women (7.71%) and 63 men (28/3%) with a mean age of 32.07 years old participated in this study. From 223 participants, 177 (71.7%) had indurations less than 5mm, 11 (4.9%) had indurations between 5-10mm, 20 (9%) had indurations between 10-15mm and 9 (9%) had indurations more than 15mm. In this study, among the sex, age, duration of employment, history of contact with TB patients and latent TB no significant relationship was found, but there was a significant relationship among the job, activities unit and latent TB. In this study, from 223 participants, 40 (18%) were infected with latent TB, which according to the number of positive smear patients admitted to this hospital represents a serious need for more comprehensive educational programs and prompt actions to prevent this infection.