Eurosurveillance - Volume 25, Issue 4, 30 January 2020

Surveillance of tuberculosis (TB) treatment outcome, for which reporting has been mandatory in France since 2007, is a key component of TB control.

We aimed to present surveillance data for non-multidrug-resistant (MDR) cases reported between 2008 and 2014, and identify factors associated with potentially unfavourable treatment outcome.

Patients were classified according to their treatment outcome 12 months after beginning treatment. Poisson regression with a robust error variance was used to investigate factors associated with potentially unfavourable treatment outcome. Missing data were handled using multiple imputation.

A total of 22,526 cases were analysed for treatment outcome. Information available on treatment outcome increased between 2008 (60%) and 2014 (71%) (p < 0.001). During this period, 74.1% of cases completed treatment, increasing from 73.0% in 2008 to 76.9% in 2014 (p < 0.001). This proportion was 74.0% in culture-positive pulmonary cases. Overall, 19.8% of cases had a potentially unfavourable outcome, including lost-to-follow-up, transferred out, still on treatment, death related to TB and interrupted treatment. Potentially unfavourable outcome was significantly associated with TB severity, residing in congregate settings, homelessness, being a smear-positive pulmonary case, being born abroad and residing in France for < 2 years, history of previous anti-TB treatment and age > 85 years.

Monitoring of treatment outcome is improving over time. The increase in treatment completion over time suggests improved case management. However, treatment outcome monitoring needs to be strengthened in cases belonging to population groups where the percentage of unfavourable outcome is the highest and in cases where surveillance data shows poorer documented follow-up.