[Medical characteristics of cases of pulmonary tuberculosis and the place of systematic radiography screening among the means of discovery. Cross-sectional survey of 984 cases of pulmonary tuberculosis reported in France in 1984].

We present the results of a study conducted in 1984 in 31 DDASS centres which enabled us to constitute a standardized sample representative of all cases of tuberculosis currently notified in France. An analysis of the patients' characteristics showed that cases of tuberculosis were discovered in equal numbers in three branches of medicine: industrial medicine and welfare centres, general medicine including (to a very small extent) private specialists, and hospital medicine (in-patients and out-patients). Most of the subjects in our study had clinical signs of tuberculosis at the time of diagnosis, and it was these signs that prompted them to consult. About 28% of the cases (25% in an undifferentiated population) were detected by systematic radiography, and 25 to 50% of these patients (45-66% for the whole of the population notified) were contagious. From the results of this study, the number of patients detected by systematic radiography in 1982 was estimated at approximately 3,000; of these, 800 to 1,580 might have been contagious. In that same year, 9 million systematic radiological examinations were performed, which means that the yield of these examinations was 9 to 17.6 in 100,000 for contagious pulmonary tuberculosis and 34 in 100,000 for all cases of pulmonary tuberculosis.