It's worth
revisiting the
Pooran et al. study for the discussion on return rates;
In reality, up to 60% of individuals fail to return for their TST results [27,28])
Such a high failure rate is regarded as
commonplace
Within our programmatic setting, only 47% of eligible patients completed repeat TST testing for the purpose of this study. This finding suggests that similar rates of return for follow-up testing during contact studies may be expected in comparable patient populations.
however Pooran et al chose a 90% return rate because
We assumed that there will be a stringent follow up of contacts
At what cost? In the
Ugandan trial they had to employ
A team of five experienced home health visitors traced the subjects who did not keep scheduled appointments and encouraged them to return to the clinic.
which must stretch the budget. Pooran acknowledges this by saying
Indeed, for this reason, the Health Protection Agency in the UK [29] recommends IGRA single testing in situations when screening large numbers of individuals makes testing with the TST problematic due to the large number of people that need to be followed up for TST reading
yet Pooran consistently fails to apply a cost to the follow up procedure.
