Setting: Iasi County, Romania.
Objective: To assess the completeness of notification of adult tuberculosis (TB; age > or=15 years) in 2004.
Design: Record-linkage and capture-recapture analysis of three TB-related registers: a notification register, a laboratory register and a prescriptions register.
Results: After record linkage, the observed completeness of the notification register was 86.4%, giving an observed adult TB incidence rate of 202 per 100,000 population. After capture-recapture analysis, internal validity analysis and application of alternative truncated population estimation models, the estimated completeness of the notification register was 82-85%, giving an estimated adult TB incidence rate of between 204 and 212/100,000.
Conclusion: This study shows that the severity of the TB problem in Iasi County is under-reported. The results are in agreement with a previous estimate of the undernotification of TB in Romania by the the World Health Organization.