We defined 'cases' as patients registered in 2006 as re-treatment case (treatment category II) with a recorded treatment outcome of default from the TB register.
Among those who were previously treated for TB, 77 (68%) of cases and 80 (70%) of controls had a TB treatment outcome of default, failure, or unknown outcome for the most recent previous TB treatment episode (p=0.82).
Province stratified analyses were conducted for the two primary outcomes of interest, default and treatment success, using the same model parameters with the exception of province clusters.
But he warned that Europe would be entering "uncharted waters" that made the outcome of a default uncertain.
We conducted multivariate analysis to identify risk factors for the composite outcome of death, default, or treatment failure during TB treatment.
Each outcome of interest (default, success, cured, completed, failed, and died) was evaluated separately, using the log of the proportion of each outcome at each time point.
Compared to new patients, re-treatment TB patients have much worse treatment outcomes, due to high rates of default.
Conversely, the non-tracer subdistricts from the same provinces showed an increase in the proportion of default treatment outcomes during the analysis time period.
Alternatively, the lack of data on the treatment outcomes of transferred out and defaulted children among whom mortality is expected to be higher might have resulted in underestimating the mortality rate.
We pooled the proportion of successful outcome, death, default, transfer of care, and failure across studies using a random-effects meta-analysis.
