TY - JOUR T1 - Tuberculosis treatment outcome monitoring in European Union countries: systematic review JF - European Respiratory Journal JO - Eur Respir J SP - 635 LP - 643 DO - 10.1183/09031936.00030612 VL - 41 IS - 3 AU - Rob van Hest AU - Csaba Ködmön AU - Suzanne Verver AU - Connie G.M. Erkens AU - Masja Straetemans AU - Davide Manissero AU - Gerard de Vries Y1 - 2013/03/01 UR - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/41/3/635.abstract N2 - Treatment success measured by treatment outcome monitoring (TOM) is a key programmatic output of tuberculosis (TB) control programmes. We performed a systematic literature review on national-level TOM in the 30 European Union (EU)/European Economic Areas (EEA) countries to summarise methods used to collect and report data on TOM.Online reference bibliographic databases PubMed/MEDLINE and EMBASE were searched to identify relevant indexed and non-indexed literature published between January 2000 and August 2010.The search strategy resulted in 615 potentially relevant indexed citations, of which 27 full-text national studies (79 data sets) were included for final analysis. The selected studies were performed in 10 EU/EEA countries and gave a fragmented impression of TOM in the EU/EEA. Publication year, study period, sample size, databases, definitions, variables, patient and outcome categories, and population subgroups varied widely, portraying a very heterogeneous picture.This review confirmed previous reports of considerable heterogeneity in publications of TOM results across EU/EEA countries. PubMed/MEDLINE and EMBASE indexed studies are not a suitable instrument to measure representative TOM results for the 30 EU/EEA countries. Uniform and complete reporting to the centralised European Surveillance System will produce the most timely and reliable results of TB treatment outcomes in the EU/EEA. ER -