Observational studyEpidemiologia e servicos de saude : revista do Sistema Unico de Saude do Brasil2025
Effect of successive tuberculin skin test readings on healthcare professionals' proficiency: an operational observational study in five high-tuberculosis-burden Brazilian municipalities, 2023-2024.
Observational study in Epidemiologia e servicos de saude : revista do Sistema Unico de Saude do Brasil, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Scaling Up Tuberculosis Preventive Treatment in the Brazilian Amazon (2016-2024): a Programmatic Report on Multi-sector Integration in Surveillance, Health Services and Academia.Revista da Sociedade Brasileira de Medicina Tropical · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveTo verify the effect of repeated readings of the tuberculin skin test on the proficiency of healthcare professionals.
methodsThis was an operational observational study that compared the readings of professionals and lead trainers during training sessions conducted by the Ministry of Health in five Brazilian municipalities. The mean difference between readings, agreement, sensitivity, and specificity were calculated, considering the lead trainer as the gold standard for each of the first 50 readings. The Kappa index assessed interobserver agreement. The database originated from a training program on tuberculin skin test reading. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences Statistics (SPSS) software was used for descriptive analyses.
results168 professionals were trained, and a total of 5,929 readings were performed. The average number of readings per professional was 35.3±29.2 (minimum=5, maximum=122). The mean difference between the readings of the professionals and those of the lead trainers was 0.01 mm (±0.70 mm). The agreement was 93.0% for readings between 0 mm and 4 mm, 74.8% for readings between 5 mm and 9 mm, and 88.2% for readings of 10 mm or more (weighted Kappa coefficient 0.864). Sensitivity and specificity were 96.5% and 93.0% for the 5 mm cutoff point (the most commonly used in Brazil) and 88.2% and 95.0% for the 10 mm cutoff. None of the evaluated parameters changed during the first 50 readings.
conclusionThere was no effect of successive readings on the professionals' proficiency, which was high from the first reading according to all parameters. These findings support the newly published training recommendations of the Ministry of Health.
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