Diversities between pediatric extra-pulmonary and pulmonary tuberculosis: a warning sign for the future

Background: Tuberculosis(TB) remains a major global health problem. The childhood tuberculosis has some unique features different which makes the diagnosis more complicated. We described the epidemiologic, clinical and microbiologic features of children with extrapulmonary and pulmonary TB. Methods: The data of the patients 10 years. PTB was present in 75.0% of the cases and EXPTB was present in 25% of cases. There was no significant difference between the EXPTB and PTB by means of distribution of age groups(p=0,201). The rate of patients free of constitutional symptoms were significantly higher in EXPTB compared to PTB(p=0.000). There was no significant difference between EXPTB and PTB by means of sources detection(p=0.069). Conclusion : TB is still a major public health problem. EXPTB has an insidious and silent onset without any constitutional symptoms and microbiological confirmation plus the adult source could not be found mostly. Thus detection of the adult source is mandatory for controlling the TB disease in children