Case-finding and treatment activities in the National Tuberculosis Programme (NTP) are mainly dependent on self reporting chest symptomatics. It was of main interest to find out that patients who report to the health institutions due to suffering remain symptom free later on or there is a recurrence of symptoms among sputum positive patients during 14 intervening years i.e., from 1961-1974. The follow up was carried out in 1974, in spite of such a long interval, information from 20.3% of the patients including dead was collected.

At the time of diagnosis in 1961 at LWC, 91.6% of patients had symptoms. During the total period from 1961 to the time of interview 7-16% had recurrence during each of the intervening years. Recall was possible because majority of them have taken action. But at the time of interview 29.7% reported to be having symptoms, of them nearly half had symptoms for more than 6 months. It is likely that during preceding years also there might have been a higher percentage of symptoms but the recall was poor. Considering the total duration of symptoms, 52% had experienced symptoms for more than 6 months.