A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF AURAMINE STAINING USING LED FLUORESCENT MICROSCOPY WITH ZIEHL-NEELSEN STAINING IN THE DIAGNOSIS OF PULMONARY TUBERCULOSIS

Abstract

Background: Tuberculosis remains world's leading cause of death from a single infectious agent. Pulmonary tuberculosis is the most common presentation of tuberculosis (TB). For developing countries with a large number of cases and financial constraints, evaluation of rapid and inexpensive diagnostic methods has a great importance. OBJECTIVE: To study the efficacy of Fluorescent Light Emitting Diode (LED) microscopy in the diagnosis of pulmonary TB in comparison to Ziehl-Neelsen (ZN) staining of sputum samples from patients suspected of pulmonary Tuberculosis of Dr.B.R. Ambedkar Medical College, Bangalore. MATERIALS AND METHODS: 634 sputum samples collected from suspected cases of pulmonary Tuberculosis were processed and subjected to ZN and Auramine-O (AO) staining for detection of TB. Positive smears were graded according to standard WHO criteria. RESULTS: Out of 634 sputum smears, 10.57\% and 16.56\% were positive by ZN and AO respectively. AO was found to be superior to ZN in detecting TB cases and also AO staining was able to detect more paucibacillary cases than ZN.