Prenatal purified protein derivative skin testing in a teaching clinic with a large Hispanic population.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate a tuberculosis skin testing program in an outpatient obstetric teaching clinic. This was a retrospective chart review and economic analysis. Medical records of all patients in the clinic (n = 1763) who were delivered of infants between 1993 and 1997 were reviewed. Fifty-four percent of the patients were Hispanic, and 38% were white. Epi Info 6.0 (chi2 analysis) was used to calculate statistical significance. Overall, 15.2% of the skin test results were positive. Positive test results were found in 31.3% of Asians, 23.9% of Hispanics, 9.3% of black patients, and 4.1% of white patients. Hispanics had a relative risk for a positive purified protein derivative of 5.9 (3.9 to 8.8) compared with white patients.No chest x-ray films suggested active disease. Because the highest incidence of tuberculosis is in people of reproductive age, an effective tuberculosis screening protocol during pregnancy would be valuable in reducing the incidence of tuberculosis nationally. Projected savings of this program were $57,628.