This cohort study, published as a research letter in the European Respiratory Journal on 25 September 2026, followed people treated for tuberculosis in Cambodia for two years.
Many improved substantially in the first year, but persistent respiratory symptoms, depressive symptoms and stigma remained in a proportion of survivors at two years. The authors argue that TB programmes, which count bacteriological cure and treatment completion as the end of care, miss this burden. The short published summary does not give the proportions affected.
India carries the world's largest TB burden, and post-TB lung disease is a common reason for chronic breathlessness in chest clinics. Treating completion of therapy as discharge leaves structural lung damage, airflow obstruction and depression unrecognised.
- Ask patients who have completed TB treatment about ongoing cough and breathlessness at follow-up.
- Perform spirometry in TB survivors with persistent symptoms; post-TB obstruction and restriction are common.
- Screen for depression at the end of treatment and afterwards.
- Record a history of TB in anyone presenting with chronic breathlessness; it changes the differential and the imaging.
Why it matters
It challenges the assumption that TB care ends when treatment is completed.
Don't overread it
The published summary is brief and from one country; it does not give the size of each problem.
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