Development and validation of Clinical Prediction Rules that address bottlenecks in tuberculosis diagnosis

The present project aims at the evaluation of Clinical Prediction Rules for Tuberculosis as diagnostic tools for decision-making "on the spot" in situations in which smears are negative but there is still an important clinical suspicion of active tuberculosis and the results of the cultures can't be awaited. The three most important scenarios have been chosen: first, isloation decision for hospitalized patients, second, decision of treatment initation in moderate-severely ill patients and third, decision of treatment initation in patients with tuberculosis meningitis suspicion.
These Clinical Prediction Rules, under the format of clinical scores, will be validated in this project through formal field testing. In the items of clinical isolation decision and tuberculosis meningitis treamtent initation validation will be done prospectively and in the item of moderate-severe patients it will be performed using a previously created dataset from a study on smear-negative tuberculosis diagnosis and liquid culture media.
This project will be accomplished in the context of ongoing collaborative research in which ITM has been participating together with the hospital in which the applicant is working at present.

Keywords:B680-public-health