Objective Recurrent patients due to treatment dropout or disease relapse ha
ve been congesting health centers and impeding treatment routines and servi
ces. The purpose is to study aspects of previous treatment and irregulariti
es concerning the patient, medication and service organization and to evalu
ate the outcome of retreatment.
Methods A descriptive study of patient's personal characteristics, previous
treatment and retreatment was carried out at Campinas, Sao Paulo State, in
1993 and 1994. Statistics analyses were performed using 95% confidence int
erval with Yates correction, exact Fisher test and Mantel Haenszel qui-squa
re for stratification.
Results Retreatment sequence corroborated with the default rates (63%) that
were lower, but still high among relapsed cases (28.4%). Only 34.1% of rel
apsed cases did not present irregularities at previous treatment.
Conclusions High proportions of retreatment and inadequate previous treatme
nt are favouring drug resistance. Efforts should be taken to improving tube
rculosis services efficiency because many irregularities are due to "failur
es" in health services routine.