SPECIFIC COURSE OF TUBERCULOSIS IN ELDERLY AND SENILE PATIENTS
The objective: to identify specific features of the clinical course of tuberculosis in elderly and senile patients under the current epidemic situation. The specific clinical course of tuberculosis was analyzed in 54 patients at the age of 61 years and older and compared with the course of 234 patients at the age from 18 to 39 years selected by the continuous sampling of all 472 patients discharged from hospital in 2018. The following features were found to be typical of patients of 61 years and older: more frequent chronic forms of the disease (37.0%) and complications (35.2%), the major complication was chronic cor pulmonale (33.3%); more frequent concurrent chronic nonspecific lung diseases (13.0%) and coronary heart disease/arterial hypertension (14.8%); more frequent deaths (31.5%), mainly due to pulmonary heart disease; less frequent generalization of tuberculosis (5.5%) and concurrent HIV infection (7.4%).