Keywords
pulmonary tuberculosis
microscopy
How to Cite
Abstract
The aim of this study was to evaluate the technical quality of acid-fast bacilli (AFB) smears procedure for tuberculosis (TB), which is performed in public and private laboratories (labs) affiliated to the Brazilian Healthcare System, and to report the results of the external quality assessment (EQA) performed in the TB laboratory network of State São Paulo. For such purpose, a retrospective descriptive study of EQA was conducted in 198 supervised labs for a two-year period (2009-2010). The correlation among the AFB smears results from the supervised labs and the supervisors was 99.4%; and the percentages of false-positive and false-negative results were 1.9% and 0.4 %, respectively. Comparing the smears performance between the public and private labs, the public labs showed higher quality (p-value<0.05). This study showed that 74.2 % of the evaluated labs were approved in the EQA, and that the private labs performance got low-ranking when compared to the public labs results. These findings reinforce the importance of conducting both the CQE programs for AFB smears performance and the technicians and professionals training program as this diagnostic assay is relevant and widely used in Brazil.References
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