結核病治療失敗的定義是經治療四個月後,痰培養持續或再次陽性,常見的原因為病人醫囑順從性不好或處方的不適當。此外,多重結核菌株感染合併不同的藥物抗藥性,也可能是治療失敗的一種可能,過往這種情況較少被考慮到,但是伴隨著分子生物學的發展,使用基因分型方法(如限制酵素片段長度多形性),可以鑑別及釐清不同的結核菌感染導致的治療失敗。
Treatment failure in a tuberculosis patient has been defined as continued or recurrent positive cultures after 4 months of treatment. The common reasons for this are the poor compliance of the patient or an inappropriate regimen of anti-tuberculosis drugs. Multiplestrain Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection with different drug susceptibility results is another reason that has seldom been considered in the past. The development of genotyping methods, such as restriction fragment length polymorphism, has considerably improved the ability to distinguish M. tuberculosis.