Contact tracing and population screening for tuberculosis - who should be assessed?

Abstract

Screening for TB of new entrants to the United Kingdom is part of the national programme for control and prevention of TB, whereas tracing contacts of those with smear-negative and non-pulmonary disease is not. This study demonstrates that, in our population, the contact-tracing strategy is more effective than new entrant screening. It is not likely that the contacts have caught their disease from the index case, but rather that in high-incidence areas such as ours such tracing selects extended families or communities at particularly high risk.