Time to death and risk factors among tuberculosis patients in Northern Ethiopia

Abstract

Abstract Objective The main objective of this study was to assess time to death and associated risk factors among tuberculosis (TB) patients. Results A total of 769 TB patients were studied and of those, 87 (11.3%) patients died. All of the deaths occurred within 7 months of anti-tuberculosis therapy. Extra-pulmonary TB (AHR = 17.376, 95% CI; 3.88–77.86, p < 0.001) as compared to pulmonary TB and cotrimoxazole prophylaxis therapy (CPT) (AHR = 0.15, 95% CI; 0.03–0.74, p = 0.02) were found to be the predictors of mortality. We noticed higher rates of mortality. Extra-pulmonary TB patients have high risk and TB-HIV co-infected patients who received CPT have low risk of death. Improving early diagnosis of extra-pulmonary TB and early CPT initiation of TB-HIV co-infected patients could minimize patient’s mortality.

Keywords

• Time to death
• Tuberculosis
• Risk factors
• Ethiopia