Abstract: Background: Tuberculosis is the most common and deadly multisystem disease affecting the developing world. Its incidence and prevalence is on a rise in developing countries. About 10% of pulmonary tuberculosis patients present with extra-skeletal involvement of which spine is most commonly affected. It can cause neural compromise, bone destruction and spinal deformity.
Material and Methods: Our study includes 30 patients with signs and symptoms of potts spine which were evaluated further by a similar protocol of investigations in last 2 years and their demographic data, clinical, radiological and microbiological findings are reported. The clinical parameters taken into consideration were fever, cough, backache and neurological complaints and any positive findings on plain radiographs of relevant spinal region and their relative presence or absence were correlated with confirmatory diagnosis on AFB culture and gene Xpert.
Results: Fever & backache were most common complaints present in 19 (63.3%) of subjects. Neurological complaints were present in 15 (50%) of subjects followed by cough in 9 (30%) of subjects.22 subjects showed some finding suggestive of potts spine on plain radiograph.18 (60%) subjects were positive for MTB on culture from biopsy taken.23 (76.7%) subjects were having gene expert test positive while 7 (23%) subjects were having negative gene expert test. Total 7 out of 30 subjects had multi drug resistance (MDR) out of which 1 subject was HIV + ve while 6 were HIV –ve.2 subjects had already started the empirical ATT regimen from the peripheral centres.
Conclusion: Spinal tuberculosis is still prevelant in large numbers in developing countries which remains largely undetected in most of the health centres. Our study aims to find out the role of various common clinical symptoms individually as well as combined with radiological studies as screening tests in clinical detection of spinal tuberculosis and thus faster management in its direction.
