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Tuberculosis in Long-Term Care Facilities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 June 2016

David W. Bentley
David W. Bentley*
Affiliation:
Infections Diseases and Infection Control Units, Monroe Community Hospital and the Infectious Diseases Unit and Department of Medicine, University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, Rochester, New York
*
Infectious Diseases Unit, Monroe Community Hospital, 435 East Henrietta Road Rochester, NY 14603
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Extract

Persons age 65 and over constitute the largest reservoir of Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection in the United States today. During 1987, 6,150 tuberculosis cases were reported among this high-risk group. These cases represent 27% of the total US tuberculosis morbidity, although this age group constitutes only 12% of the US population. Tuberculosis case rates in the United States are higher among the elderly (20.6 per 100,000) than among all other age groups (average 9.3 per 100,000).

More Americans live in nursing homes than in any other type of residential institution; on any given day approximately 5% of all elderly persons are living in a nursing home. Elderly nursing home residents are at greater risk for tuberculosis than elderly persons living in the community. In a Centers for Disease Control (CDC)-sponsored survey of 15,379 routinely-reported tuberculosis cases from 29 states, 8% of the 4,919 cases that occurred among elderly persons occurred among residents of nursing homes. The incidence of tuberculosis among nursing home residents was 39.2 per 100,000 person years, whereas the incidence of tuberculosis among elderly persons living in the community was 21.5 per 100,000. The observed rate of tuberculosis among nursing home employees was three times the rate expected in employed adults of similar age, race and sex (CDC, unpublished data).

Type
Topics in Long-Term Care
Information
Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , January 1990 , pp. 42 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America 1990

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