Abstract
The International Standards for Tuberculosis Care define the essential level of care for managing patients who have or are presumed to have tuberculosis, or are at increased risk of developing the disease. The resources and capacity in the European Union (EU) and the European Economic Area permit higher standards of care to secure quality and timely TB diagnosis, prevention and treatment. On this basis, the European Union Standards for Tuberculosis Care (ESTC) were published in 2012 as standards specifically tailored to the EU setting. Since the publication of the ESTC, new scientific evidence has become available and, therefore, the standards were reviewed and updated.
A panel of international experts, led by a writing group from the European Respiratory Society (ERS) and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), updated the ESTC on the basis of new published evidence. The underlying principles of these patient-centred standards remain unchanged. The second edition of the ESTC includes 21 standards in the areas of diagnosis, treatment, HIV and comorbidities, and public health and prevention.
The ESTC target clinicians and public health workers, provide an easy-to-use resource and act as a guide through all the required activities to ensure optimal diagnosis, treatment and prevention of TB.
Abstract
The European Union Standards for Tuberculosis Care: a guide for clinicians and public health workers to ensure optimal diagnosis, treatment and prevention of TB http://ow.ly/C80K30jxr1o
Footnotes
This document was endorsed by the by the ERS Science Council and Executive Committee in April 2018, and approved by ECDC in March 2018.
Conflict of interest: S. Aliberti reports grants and personal fees from Bayer Healthcare, Aradigm Corporation, Grifols, Chiesi and INSMED, and personal fees from AstraZeneca, Basilea, Zambon, Novartis, Raptor, Actavis UK Ltd and Horizon, outside the submitted work.
Support statement: The development of the ESTC was financially supported by the European Respiratory Society (ERS) through core funds via the guidelines development scheme and by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). The ERS development group (G. Sotgiu, G.B. Migliori, R. Centis, L. D'Ambrosio and R. Duarte) and the ECDC (M.J. van der Werf and S. Rosales-Klintz) wrote the first draft. All authors then reviewed the draft document and contributed revisions and supporting references. Funding information for this article has been deposited with the Crossref Funder Registry.
- Received December 22, 2017.
- Accepted March 11, 2018.
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