Abstract :
Introduction: Tuberculosis (TB) is a chronic infectious disease and has major health implications. The disease has a global distribution, and the incidence is more in developing countries. The paucibasillary nature of tuberculous bacilli and varied clinical presentation puts the clinician in a quandary for clinical diagnosis of genital tuberculosis. According to some Indian studies, tubercular endometritis and salphingitis accounts for 4-9% cases of infertility.
Objective: The objective of the present study was to evaluate the efficacy of PCR technique in the diagnosis of GTB in female infertility in comparison to culture and histopathological examination.
Materials and Methods: 42 infertile women fulfilling inclusion and exclusion criteria were enrolled over a period of 24 months after Ethics Committee approval and written consent. The women were subjected to routine and specialised investigations of endometrium and ascitic fluid from pouch of douglas as culture, TB, PCR, and histopathology and the data was analysed.
Out of results of 42 women of infertility studied, 19 women had positive findings on hysterosalpingography,18 women had laparoscopic findings, 11 women had positive TB PCR, 2 cultures and 3 histopathology reports were positive.
There was good agreement when microbiological culture was compared with histopathology whereas the agreement was poor between culture and PCR.
Keyword :
Genital tuberculosis, Culture, Polymerase chain reaction, Histopathology.