Mantoux test has been still widely used in the diagnosis of tuberculosis. The aim of our work was to confirm low usefulness of this test in epidemiological situation of tuberculosis in Poland. The study was conducted on 283 patients (108 women, 175 men; mean age 46.3 years), including 47 healthy subjects (group I), 57 patients with non-tuberculous chronic diseases of respiratory system (group II), 56 sputum-positive patients with pulmonary tuberculosis (group III), 53 sputum-negative patients with active pulmonary tuberculosis (group IV) as well as 70 subjects with non-active tuberculous lesions in the lungs (group V). Mantoux test was performed in all the patients with the use of 2 units of Danish tuberculin Rt23. The percentage of positive tuberculin reactions was high in all the groups, reaching the following values: 42.6%, 50.9%, 73.2%, 75.5% and 82.3% respectively. The results indicate that tuberculin test is of low value for the diagnosis of active tuberculosis in Poland.

Keywords: pulmonary tuberculosis, Diagnosis, Tuberculin Test, Allergy, anergy