TABLE 1.

Summary of advantages and limitations of routine detections for Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB).

Detections	Advantages	Limitations
Culture	• Gold standard; • Low cost; • Drug susceptibility testing.	• Long growth circle (it takes up to 8 weeks to grow into visible colonies on solid culture media) (16); • Low sensitivity and poor positive rate.
Acid-fast staining	• Low cost; • Short turnaround time (the average time is 16.6 h) (90).	• Hard to distinguish between Mycobacterium leprae and non-tuberculous Mycobacteria (NTM) (96); • Tend to receive negative results in HIV-infected patients or children, who bear low bacterial load (97); • Low sensitivity and poor positive rate.
Imaging examination	• Assist in diagnosis and follow-up (17, 18)	• Atypical when co-infection or low immune status occur (17); • Not specific in extrapulmonary TB (18).
Xpert MTB/RIF	• Short turnaround time (the average turnaround time is 24.1 h) (90); • Drug resistance detection (against RIF) (98); • High sensitivity and specificity (20)	• Only specific sites can be detected (20, 99); • Xpert has limited sensitivity in HIV patients with miliary lung infiltrates, mainly due to paucibacillary specimens (20, 99); • Better testing might not improve the outcomes (100, 101).
TST and IGRA	• Low cost; • Identify LTBI (22).	• Low sensitivity in immunocompromised populations; • False-positive in patients vaccinated with Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) via TST (24); • Unable to differentiate between LTBI and active TB (22, 23)