Prevalence of tuberculosis and diabetes comorbidity in patients attending secondary healthcare hospital in south India: A retrospective study

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Tuberculosis, a communicable disease and diabetes, a non-communicable disease together has a bidirectional relationship toward each other withsignificant morbidity and delayed treatment outcome. Therefore, there is a need to identify the prevalence of both these diseases in a community. A retrospective study was planned to identify the prevalence of both diseases among the patients attending secondary hospitals for 3 years. METHODS: The study was conducted in the chest diseases department in a secondary care hospital after obtaining approval from the institute ethics committee and RNTCP. The retrospective data in the hospital register was used to identify various parameters. The data for basic demographic characteristics, number of new cases, previously treated cases, pulmonary/extrapulmonary cases, drug resistance cases, and DM/TB cases were entered in Microsoft excel and were analyzed. RESULTS: The prevalence of TB among the patients attending the chest diseases department was 2.9%, 2.5%, and 3% for the years 2016, 2017, and 2018, respectively. The prevalence of DM/TB ranged between 8.5–11%, which is a lesser range when compared with many other studies. INTERPRETATIONS AND CONCLUSION: There was no significant difference in the prevalence between the years. The screening of one disease in the presence of the other can reduce the prevalence and improve the prognosis.