A systematic review of risk factors for mortality among tuberculosis patients in South Africa

Table 2 Frequency of reported key diagnostic and treatment variables among included studies, South Africa, 2010–2018 (n = 24)

	Number of studies	%
Method of TB diagnosis
Clinical	6	25.0
Chest radiograph	5	20.8
Laboratory ^a	24	100.0
- Smear	10 ^a	41.7
- Culture	21 ^a	87.5
- Xpert	6 ^a	25.0
Not reported	1 ^b	4.2
Other	2	8.3
Treatment regimen described	14	58.3
Place of death reported	2	8.3
Duration (timing)
- Between diagnosis and death	4	16.7
- Between treatment initiation and death	9	37.5
- Of treatment	13	54.2

TB tuberculosis
^aLaboratory diagnosis is a subset of method of TB diagnosis. Some studies reported performing more than one type of laboratory diagnosis. The sum of these diagnostics therefore exceeds the total number of studies reported
^bOne study included 23% (959/4162) of TB patients with no data on the method of diagnosis [41]

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