Chest
Clinical InvestigationsTuberculosis Screening: Evaluation of A Food Handlers' Program
Section snippets
Materials and Methods
From Oct 1, 1980, through Sept 30, 1982, all applicants for a food handler license were skin tested for tuberculosis in Denver's Metropolitan Tuberculosis Clinic (Denver Public Health Department) according to standard guidelines8 using Tubersol (Master Batch CT68, Connaught Laboratories Limited, Ontario, Canada). Test reactions of 10 mm or more induration were considered positive. All positive reactors not previously known to the clinic received a standard 14 × 17 chest roentgenogram and were
Results
Table 1 presents, by age and ethnic group, the tuberculin skin test positivity rates in 6,090 food handler license applicants. Overall, 560 or 9.2 percent had a positive tuberculin test. For the largely American born white, black, and Hispanic ethnic groups, skin test positivity rates increased, as expected, with age, with whites having the lowest total positivity rate (4.7 percent) and Hispanics the highest (14.6 percent). The Southeast Asian group, most of whom were recent refugees,
Discussion
Health screening activities and periodic examinations of patients are being increasingly challenged, yet some may still have significant merit. Stead,10 in an example of meaningful selective screening combined with subsequent professional intervention, tuberculin tested 200 residents of six nursing homes and found the rate of infection to range as high as 44 percent. Only 12 percent of new admissions were found to be similarly infected, suggesting that nonapparent but serious spread of disease
Acknowledgments
Dr. Richard Hopkins of the Colorado Department of Health encouraged us in this study.
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Do health care needs of indigent Mexican-American, black, and white adolescents differ?
1990, Journal of Adolescent Health CareActive case finding of tuberculosis in Europe: A Tuberculosis Network European Trials Group (TBNET) survey
2008, European Respiratory JournalTargeted tuberculin testing and treatment of latent tuberculosis infection
2000, American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care MedicineHuman immunodeficiency virus seroprevalence and risk assessment of a homeless population in Denver
1996, Sexually Transmitted DiseasesTuberculosis Infection Among Young Adults Entering the US Navy in 1990
1993, Archives of Internal Medicine
Manuscript received September 27; revision accepted December 1.