Table 2. Performance (per patient) of different microscopy methods using smear-positive case definition of one positive smear out of three collected specimens.

	Direct ZN		Direct LED-FM		LED-FM after NaOCl
	Pos	Neg	Pos	Neg	Pos	Neg
Positive culture	67	26	68	25	73	20
Negative culture	12	284	9	287	36	260
– Sensitivity, % [95%CI]	72.0 [61.8–81.6]		73.2 [62.9–81.8]		78.5 [68.8–86.3]
– Specificity, % [95%CI]	95.9 [93.0–97.9]		96.7 [94.3–98.6]		87.8 [83.6–91.3]
– Positive LR	17.8		24.0		6.45
– Negative LR	0.29		0.28		0.24

ZN: Ziehl Neelsen; LED-FM: light-emitting diode fluorescence microscopy; Pos: positive; Neg: negative.