Children and Adolescents

The approach to designing MDR/RR-TB treatment regimens is largely the same for all children and adolescents, regardless of HIV status, although potential drug–drug interactions should be avoided through the careful selection of TB medicines in the regimen.¹⁹

A person with treatment failure is defined as one whose treatment regimen needed to be terminated or permanently changed to a new regimen or treatment strategy. Reasons for such a change include no clinical or bacteriological response, adverse drug reactions, and evidence of resistance to medicines in the regimen (108).

The possibility of treatment failure should be considered in a child or adolescent who is receiving TB treatment and (72):

Health-related quality of life is the perceived quality of a person’s daily life. It is an holistic way to quantify and measure illness-associated morbidity and the impact of health interventions. Examples of generic, non-disease-specific tools that can be used in young children, including those with TB, are EQ-5D-Y and TANDI (153, 154). EQ-5D-Y is a widely used self-report measure for children aged 8 years and over (155).