Retrospective study of clinical and lesion characteristics of patients undergoing surgical treatment for Pulmonary Tuberculosis in Georgia

•Therapeutical surgery is still currently used for pulmonary TB in Georgia, both for DS and for MDR/XDR-TB; one of the main indications for it is the presence of lesions in radiological assays.•70% of patients were men, and most of operated lesions showed the presence of fresh necrosis in spite of long-termed treatment with first or second line drugs.•There are statistically significant differences in the type of necrosis and culture conversion according to gender and drug sensitivity of the responsible strains.•A non despricable percentage of those cases considered microbiologically cured according to WHO still showed viable bacilli in the surgical specimen.•Host factors and biomarkers should be included in future studies on therapeutical surgery of TB, both for DS and MDR/XDR-TB cases.