Métodos moleculares para diagnóstico de niños con tuberculosis en países de Latinoamérica: revisión narrativa

Abstract

The diagnosis of tuberculosis in the childhood population represents a major obstacle to the health system because the pediatric patient is paucibacillary.This is done by four classic criteria: epidemiological, tuberculinic, radiological and clinical; however, this method has an approximate sensitivity of 50%.On the other hand, molecular tests are new methods for the diagnosis and treatment of these infections, due to the rapidity of the result, high sensitivity, specificity and also, it reports resistance to antituberculosis drugs.Therefore, the objective of the review is to investigate the diagnosis of molecular methods in pediatric tuberculosis, since it is considered a vulnerable population, with more probability of disease progression, diagnostic problems due to the condition of being pediatric patients, the difficult microbiological isolation and therapeutic difficulties.Objective: describe the evidence on the use of molecular tests in the diagnosis of childhood tuberculosis in Latin American countries reported in the scientific literature.Materials and methods: a narrative review of the literature Capítulo II.