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Pulmonary tuberculosis and cigarette smoking

Introduction: Smoking and tuberculosis represent two major world health issues particularly in developing countries.Tobacco has a significant impact on the risk of tuberculosis.

Aim: Describe the relationship between tobacco consumption and pulmonary tuberculosis infection.

Materials and methods: It’s a comparative study between two groups of patients hospitalized in our department for pulmonary tuberculosis between January 2010 to December 2011. A first group made by 25 smokers patients was compared to a second group consists of 25 non smokers patients.

Results: The most frequent symptoms in both groups were cough and loss of weight. Compared to the non smokers patients, the smokers patients had a longer delay of diagnosis (p=0.004), more nodular lesions (64% vs 24%, p=0.004) and more bilateral lesions (58.2 % vs 41.8%, p=0.045) in the chest X ray, a longer delay of sputum negativity (1.99 vs 1.12 months, p=0.004) and more frequent pulmonary sequelae (70.8% vs 29.2%, p=0.02). Evolution after antituberculosis treatment was favourable for all patients.

Conclusion: Tobacco may delay the diagnosis, the recovery of pulmonary tuberculosis and may induce pulmonary sequelae in spite of correctly antituberculosis treatment. Smoking cessation represents an essential means of controlling tuberculosis epidemic.