Pediatric Tuberculosis: A Comprehensive Overview

Excerpt

Pediatric tuberculosis (TB) is both underdiagnosed and overdiagnosed, which makes accurate estimates of the disease burden difficult [1]. The manifestations are different from adult TB; children develop more extra-pulmonary disease and much less often, contagious pulmonary disease. In small children, the interval between infection and disease is weeks to months and is considerably shorter than in adults where it could be in years. These differences and the pauci-bacillary nature of disease in children makes the approach to diagnosis, treatment and prevention of TB in children necessarily unique that requires special attention [2]. In this issue of IJP focusing on pediatric TB, important aspects such as the epidemiology, newer advances in the diagnosis, current treatment approaches including shortened treatment regimens for drug sensitive TB and that for drug resistant TB, sequelae after TB treatment and preventive treatment have been dealt with by experts. …