Tuberculosis (TB) is a multisystem infectious disease, which mainly affects the
lungs, presents a chronic evolution, its main etiological agent, Mycobacterium
tuberculosis. In 2021, Pará had a higher incidence rate than the national one, reaching
a value of 42. Active tobacco consumption is related to an increased risk of tuberculosis
of about 2.5 times for recurrence and mortality. As most of the organic changes caused
by smoking are reversible within a period of 6 weeks, smoking cessation can have a
significant impact on patients' prognosis. So, in order to assess the effect of smoking
on the prognosis of pulmonary tuberculosis, medical records of 68 patients who were
hospitalized at the HUJBB during the period from 2015 to 2020 were statistically
analyzed to estimate the prevalence of smoking among patients; to compare clinical
epidemiological variables, sex, age, length of stay and HIV coinfection in relation to
smoking and to verify the association between smoking and the outcome (death and
survival). Statistical tests of Chi-square adherence, Mann-Withiney test were applied,
in addition to the elaboration of a prognostic risk indicator for PTB. Regarding the
frequency of cases in the period from 2015 to 2020, there was an accumulated
reduction of 80.07% in hospitalization for pulmonary TB. The age of the individuals
ranged from 21 to 90 years, 33.82% were women and 66.18% were men. The
proportion of men affected was almost twice as high as that of women, differing
significantly by the chi-square test of adherence for equal expected proportions (χ2 =
6.485; df = 1; p-value = 0.0109). Regarding smoking, 50% of patients were smokers
at some point in their lives. Regarding the clinical outcome, 11.76% died. A proportional
difference (one-sided p = 0.00364) was observed for male smokers in relation to
female smokers. The Pulmonary Tuberculosis Prognostic Risk Index showed
statistically significant differences between sex and smoking. The results obtained in
this study tend to support the hypotheses that being a man, a smoker, living with HIV AIDS and at an advanced age constitutes a risk for pulmonary tuberculosis, including
death.
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