This study of tuberculosis patients who interrupt their treatment was carried out in the city of Porto Velho (RO) motivated by my belief that the interruption of this treatment is a challenge to collective health, due to the difficulties which health professional face with respect to the treatment and control of tuberculosis. The adopted qualitative approach and the use of the dialectic-hermeneutic method of analysis of the material, collected through interviews, led me to infer that the subjects of this study possessed little knowledge of tuberculosis, revealing the adoption of attitudes related to the impact which to the diagnosis and the prolonged treatment caused them and the social environment in which they live. For the twelve patients who participated in this study, the motives for interruption of treatment were related to reasons rooted in the non-spoken and in causes like the collateral effects of medicines, the disorganization of services and the illusion of being cured. This has important implications for our technical-methodological positions and for the patient-professional relationship, in our search for an approach which allows us to face the binomial tuberculosis-interruption of treatment as experiences undergone by patients, families and the social networks constructed by them over time.
tuberculosis; treatment interruption; Collective Health