ASSESSING THE UTILITY OF GENEXPERT AS A DIAGNOSTIC TOOL IN THE DETECTION OF TUBERCULOSIS IN A NEUROLOGICAL TERTIARY CARE SETUP

Tuberculosis in the CNS(central nervous system) is the most dangerous form of extrapulmonaryTuberculosis and is still a formidable clinical challenge. Rapid diagnosis of Tuberculosis and detectionof Rifampicin resistance are essential for early disease management. The Xpert/Rif Assay is anautomated nucleic acid amplification test that can identify the Mycobacterium tuberculosis DNA andresistance to Rifampicin. In this experiment we used different pulmonary as well as extrapulmonarysamples from patients to assess the utility of genexpert as a diagnostic tool.