Abstract
Treating tuberculosis (TB) patients with inappropriate treatment regimens can lead to treatment failure, and thus uncured patients, and/or to the development of (multi)-drug resistance. A systematic review was performed to assess the knowledge of appropriate TB drug regimens among all categories of health care workers (HCW).
MEDLINE, EMBASE and other databases were searched for relevant articles in January, 2011. Observational studies published as of year 2000, which assessed HCW-knowledge of TB–treatment, were selected. A treatment regimen, drug dosage or treatment duration was considered inappropriate if it was not recommended by national guidelines or by the WHO.
Of 1,896 studies, 31 were included from 14 different countries. No study was performed in Europe. In all studies, HCWs with inappropriate knowledge of treatment regimens (8% to 100%) or treatment duration (5% to 99%) were observed. The few studies providing detailed data showed that HCWs mainly reported giving treatment regimens with too many drugs and for too long. Knowledge of appropriate doses was also insufficient in most studies.
The available studies show that there is a lack of knowledge of national or international TB treatment guidelines and recommendations. Generalization of the findings to other settings and countries should be done with caution.
- ERS
