Survey On Utilization Of Mobile And Network And Its Determinants Among Pulmonary Tuberculosis Patients

Tuberculosis (TB) is a chronic respiratory disease that seriously damages popoulation health. At present, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommend a directly observed treatment short course (DOTS) stratrgy. This strategy includes treating TB using standardized rifampicin-based regiments of six months duration for new TB cases and eight months for retreatment cases. However, it is not possible to complete the whole duration due to the hospitals, patients and the nature of TB. As a result, Most of durations were performed at home. Failure of patients to complete TB treatment results in infectivity, drug resistance, relapse and death. It is therefore important to find better ways of improving patient aderence to TB treatment. Some studies address multiple dimensions of adherence behaviours rather than single-target interventions.With the development of scientific techniques and social economy, multiple dimensions of adherence behaviours will be performed by the mobile phone and network. Application of mobile phone and network technology not only make multiple-target interventions simple and integrated, but also improve the efficiency of intervention. In a word, we propose to application of mobile phone and network technology is not only the best choice of improving patient adherence to TB treatment at present, but also the future development direction of tuberculosis control and treatment.The stratified cluster random sampling was used in the study. Specifically,720resident patients with tuberculosis were selected in6country-level cities of Changqing, Junan, Zhangqiu, Wendeng, Yishui and Rushan of Shandong province from January1to December31of2011. The study provided the descriptive analysis of the mobile phone and network of pulmonary tuberculosis patients underwent domiciliary chemotherapy and conducted the univariate analysis of the possible influencing factors of them. Finally the unconditionally Logistic regression was used to explore the influencing factors.Our findings of the study included pulmonary tuberculosis patients underwent domiciliary chemotherapy had poor education and bad economic situation. The results of univariate analysis suggested that age, education, marriage, occupation, the seat of the registered resident, health care, income and source of income were related with the utilization of the mobile phone and network; The unconditionally Logistic regression suggested that illiterate and semiliterate, The level of education of preschool children and the married were three independent risk factors of low utilization of the mobile phone. The illiterate and semiliterate was the independent risk factor of low utilization of the network.Our results suggested policy makers can adopt short messaging service (SMS) adherence intervention as pactice to be possibly used or in combination with other proven adherence. They would inform clinic or hospital managers of how best to use the intervention to promote adherence thereby achieving high cure rates and low treatment-failure among patients. Only single-target interventions of improve patient adherence to TB treatment is not enough. Clinic or hospital managers can improve patient adherence to TB treatment by network technology resources with a spurt of progress. It is still a long-term and arduous task to improve patient adherence to TB treatment. With the development of family income and the level of education, we believe that the mobile phone and network will be the new platform for preventing and treating TB.