Tehran University Medical Journal

Background and Aim: Tuberculosis is one the major health care problems in developing countries. Miliary tuberculosis is induced by blood dissemination of multiple tubercle bacilli, the paramount importance of accurate diagnosis of military tuberculosis is because of its dismal outcome if untreated and the chance of cure if diagnosis happens early in the course of the disorder. In this study we describe the demographic and risk factors related to military tuberculosis, which enables us to control and reduce the incidence of military tuberculosis. This ultimately reduces the mortality and morbidity consistent with this disorder.

Materials and Methods: we conducted a retrospective case control study, which compares 28 patients with military tuberculosis and 56 patients with pulmonary tuberculosis as control. We reviewed all the patients&apos documents registered between years 1994-2004, after extracting raw data we analyzed them with chi-square and Fisher exact tests.

Results and Conclusion: We found that HIV (P< 0.05) infection and lack of BCG vaccination (P< 0.05) increases the number of military tuberculosis among our patients. In addition we did not find any other significant risk factor.