TY - JOUR T1 - Masks of kidney tuberculosis JF - European Respiratory Journal JO - Eur Respir J VL - 38 IS - Suppl 55 SP - p2693 AU - Denis Kholtobin AU - Ekaterina Kulchavenya Y1 - 2011/09/01 UR - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/38/Suppl_55/p2693.abstract N2 - Introduction & objectives: Urogenital tuberculosis (UGTB) is the second most common form of TB in countries with a severe epidemic situation and the third most common form in regions with low incidence of TB. 77% of men who died from tuberculosis of all localizations had prostate tuberculosis which had mostly been overlooked during their life time. In actual figures, this means about 19,000 men yearly in Russia. The main reason for late diagnosis is an atypical clinical feature of UGTB, it courses under the mask of another disease.Material & methods: We analyzed 816 history cases of UGTB patients to estimate clinical features.Results: Most common complains were flank pain (68%), dysuria (48%) and renal colic (24%); laboratory signs - pyuria (78%) and haematuria (34%). Patients were treated by urologists or GPs with diagnoses pyelonephritis (27%), cystitis (43%), cancer (8%) or urolithiasis (22%) during 5.6 years on average. Positive smear was in 17% and positive culture of Mycobacterium tuberculosis was in 44%. 64% were diagnosed in late complicated cavernous stage, when surgery is necessary – and 90% of operations were nephrectomy due to total involvement of kidney tissue.Conclusions: Most common masks of UGTB are pyelonephritis, cystitis and urolithiasis. UGTB presents non-specific symptoms and laboratory findings, except for positive MBT culture, but only about 44% cases are culture-positive. This is one of the main reasons for late and poor diagnosis of UGTB. The significance of UGTB may be considerable when the high prevalence of overall TB and the asymptomatic nature of UGTB are taken into account. ER -