Background: According to the World Health Organization, tuberculosis produces around 1.5 million deaths worldwide each year. In Peru, during the 2011-2015 period, incidence and morbidity rates have decreased from 97.4 to 87.4 and from 109.7 to 99.5 respectively. However, tuberculosis remains as the fifteenth cause of death. The clinical evolution of these patients will depend on many factors, such as adherence to treatment, comorbidities, drug resistance of the pathogen. Therefore, it is the presence and interaction of these factors that help us predict which patients could potentially fail during the treatment. Objective: To determine in patients with pulmonary tuberculosis whether direct smear study at the beginning of treatment is a prognostic factor of the discharge condition. Methods: We performed a secondary analysis of the database of the retrospective cohort study "Evaluation of ...