TÜBERKÜLİN DERİ TESTİNİN ÖLÇÜLMESİNDE PARMAK VE KALEM YÖNTEMLERİNİN KARŞILAŞTIRILMASI .

Abstract

Tuberculin skin test (PPD) is an important test far the diagnosis of tuberculosis. Palpation is an old method for the measurement of PPD enduration diameter. And this process needs experiance and takes relatively a long time to accurately measure the PPD enduration. Obtained values of the PPD measurement ma}' be different from person to person with this method. Recently new method was developed because of the standardization difficulty of the palpation method.This new method is called " Pencil Method ". But pencil method was neither standardized nor used as an alternative to the palpation method on a wide scale. In this study, new method was described to 4 health staff members who were experienced on palpation method but not on pencil method. And PPD endurations of 170 subjects were measured with both methods by these 4 staff members. The interaction between these 4 person was prevented and one did not know what other were doing. PPD enduration diameter was 10. 98±0.59 with Pencil method, 10.32±0.58 with palpation method. There was a significant difference between two methods ( p<0.005 ). There was no significant difference between the measurements of health staff members far each method. As a result, Although PPD enduration diameter was measured larger with pencil method, especially in the field studies, this method can be used as an easier and quicker method before and after the BCG vaccinations.