Under routine testing conditions, the MTD had high accuracy and rapidly detected more than half of smearnegative PTB cases. For smear-positive patients, the potential impact of MTD testing on clinical decision making was high, given 98% concordance between MTD results… Read more ›
Laboratory Performance of the MTD A total of 1,158 respiratory specimens from 641 PTB suspects were tested. Four specimens were excluded from the analysis: one because the culture was contaminated, and three because the MTD result was equivocal. Three patients (three specimens)… Read more ›
New tools are needed to increase the efficiency of Mycobacterium tuberculosis detection. The conventional rapid test (smear microscopy for acid-fast bacilli [AFB]) has poor sensitivity and specificity, and its positive predictive value (PPV) for pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) is lower in… Read more ›