Consolidated Guidelines

2.7 Systematic screening for TB disease among people attending health care services who have clinical risk factors for TB

7. In settings where the TB prevalence in the general population is 100/100 000 population or higher, systematic screening for TB disease may be conducted among people with a risk factor for TB who are either seeking health care or who are already in care

(existing recommendation: conditional recommendation, very low certainty of evidence).

8. People with an untreated fibrotic lesion seen on chest X-ray may be systematically screened for TB disease

2.2 Systematic screening for TB disease among people with structural risk factors for TB

2. Systematic screening for TB disease may be conducted among subpopulations with structural risk factors for TB. These include urban poor communities, homeless communities, communities in remote or isolated areas, indigenous populations, migrants, refugees, internally displaced persons and other vulnerable or marginalized groups with limited access to health care

(existing recommendation: conditional recommendation, very low certainty of evidence).

1.3 Scope of the 2021 update

Fig.1 summarizes the potential contribution of TB screening to standard TB care practices based on the above frameworks for TB screening and shows the conceptual framework that guided the 2021 update to the TB screening guidelines.

Fig. 1. Conceptual framework for the 2021 WHO update to guidelines for systematic screening for TB. Numbers in parentheses refer to the PICO (population, intervention, comparator and outcome) questions that guided the evidence gathering