Aim: Monitoring the dynamics of indicators of coverage and quality results of microbiological methods application for tuberculosis diagnosis in order to offer recommendations on improving the quality of microbiological diagnostics of tuberculosis. Materials and methods. The information from the official forms of statistical observation, as well as specialized requests of the Ministry of Health of Russia for the maximum available monitoring period (from 2 to 12 years), is analyzed. Results and discussion. The coverage of pulmonary TB patients by microbiological methods is more than 95%. The effectiveness of the use of microscopy remains insufficient that negatively affects the providing of infection control. There is an increase the positive result of smear microscopy in patients with pulmonary tuberculosis in the absence of destruction of lung tissue up to 10.6%, which may be associated with an increase in tuberculosis HIV co-infection. There are defects in the detection of smear-positive pulmonary TB patients in medical facilities providing primary care, which prevents the identification and follow-up of the most epidemiologically dangerous TB patients. Culturing-confirmed diagnosis has increased to 52.5% in the public health care, while remaining insufficient in prisons (26.8%). The quality control coverage of laboratories is insufficient, although there is a tendency to improve it. There has been an increase of the MDR-TB to 31.8% in new TB cases and to 53.2% in patients with relapses. Over the past year, there has been a rapid increase in the proportion of XDR-TB patients - from 2.7% to 3.7% for new TB cases and from 6.0% to 7.8% in patients with relapse of tuberculosis. When analyzing the growth rate of drug resistance to individual drugs, there is a more rapid increase in drug resistance to isoniazid compared to rifampicin and to fluoroquinolones compared to aminoglycosides and capreomycin. Conclusion. It is advisable to resume work on the implementation of diagnostic algorithms for examining people with suspected tuberculosis, supervising the medical organizations providing primary medical care and prisons by specialists in laboratory diagnostics and healthcare organization, widespread use of luminescent and LED microscopy, expanding the use of molecular genetic methods, developing regional programs for quality control of laboratory tests, to consider outsourcing laboratory research in public healthcare laboratories for some regional facilities of penitentiary system.