Retrospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2022. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Orthop. Mar 18, 2022; 13(3): 289-296
Published online Mar 18, 2022. doi: 10.5312/wjo.v13.i3.289
Diagnostic role of Xpert-MTB RIF assay in osteoarticular tuberculosis: A retrospective study
Monalisa Mohanty, Baijayantimala Mishra, Mantu Jain, Lubaib Karaniveed Puthiyapura
Monalisa Mohanty, Baijayantimala Mishra, Department of Microbiology, AIIMS Bhubaneswar, Bhubaneswar 751019, Odisha, India
Mantu Jain, Lubaib Karaniveed Puthiyapura, Department of Orthopaedics, AIIMS Bhubaneswar, Bhubaneswar 751019, Odisha, India
Author contributions: Mohanty M and Mishra B conceived the idea; Jain M created the proposal and Mishra B received the clearance; Mohanty M and Puthiyapura LK collected the data; Jain M and Mohanty M wrote the paper; Mishra B and Puthiyapura LK revised the manuscript for important intellectual content; All authors have read and agreed to the content of the manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: Clearance was obtained by Institution Review Board.
Informed consent statement: Patients were not required to give informed consent to the study because the analysis used anonymous clinical data.
Conflict-of-interest statement: There is no conflict of interest.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Mantu Jain, MD, Doctor, Surgeon, Department of Orthopaedics, AIIMS Bhubaneswar, Patrapada, Bhubaneswar 751019, Odisha, India. montu_jn@yahoo.com
Received: October 11, 2021
Peer-review started: October 11, 2021
First decision: December 10, 2021
Revised: December 11, 2022
Accepted: January 27, 2022
Article in press: January 27, 2022
Published online: March 18, 2022
Processing time: 157 Days and 0 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: Osteoarticular tuberculosis (OATB) is a severe form of extrapulmonary tuberculosis (TB) that needs prompt management. However, there is difficulty in collecting samples and, secondarily, the paucibacillary nature of the lesion gives poor sensitivity and reproducibility, often with long turnaround time of the routine conventional laboratory tests. Xpert MTB RIF assay has been approved by the World Health Organization for rapid diagnosis of pulmonary/extrapulmonary TB. This study aims to find the diagnostic efficiency of gene Xpert for OATB in suspected patients. We found sensitivity of gene Xpert assay, culture, and smear when compared with CRS to be 94.6%, 13.5%, and 16.2%, respectively, while specificity in all the three types of tests was 100%. The kappa percentage of agreement for gene Xpert, culture, and microscopy were found to be 95%, 20%, and 22.6%, respectively. Follow-up of the gene Xpert positive patients after getting anti-tubercular treatment revealed improvement of their conditions. We conclude that gene Xpert has higher sensitivity than other conventional tests for the timely diagnosis of OATB.