It is both important and feasible for NTPs to ascertain cure at the end of treatment. The notion of relapse-free cure or sustained treatment success after the end of treatment is critical; however, it is beyond the means of routine programmatic monitoring and is feasible only under operational research conditions (e.g. in special cohorts, in patients undergoing rehabilitation and during follow-up for post-TB lung disease). Therefore, the specific operational definition “sustained treatment success” was proposed (Table 10.1), with the possibility of assessing numbers of patients alive and free of TB at 6 months (for DS-TB and DR-TB) and at 12 months (for DR-TB only) after successful TB treatment.
