Safety

Report calls for more aggressive TB test for foreign-born residents

OSHA Healthcare Connection, January 9, 2007

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Current guidelines for preventing tuberculosis (TB) infections should be changed to reclassify all foreign-born residents from high-incidence countries as "high-risk" for TB, regardless of the amount of time they have lived in the United States, a new report recommends.

The report, which appeared in the January 1, 2007 issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, goes beyond the present guidelines, which recommend testing only those residing in the U.S. for five years or less.

A study conducted by Vanderbilt Medical Center and published in the July 13 New England Journal of Medicine examined the risk of TB due to the increasing number of foreign-born healthcare workers from high-incidence countries. "As the number of foreign-born healthcare workers in the United States has risen, so has the potential for transmitting tuberculosis in healthcare settings," that report concluded.



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