Objective: to identify how the notion of vulnerability is used in national and international scientific publications that address the problem of tuberculosis.
Method: an integrative review of literature published in the databases of the Biblioteca Virtual em Saúde, the United States National Library of Medicine and the Biblioteca Digital Brasileira de Teses e Dissertações, considering the descriptors Tuberculosis and Vulnerability in Portuguese and English.
Results: we selected fifty-eight studies published between 1992 and February 2014, which resulted in three categories of analysis. CONCLUSION the link between tuberculosis and the notion of vulnerability has not been sufficiently consolidated in national and international literature. This creates an obstacle for the achievement of the epistemological transformations and pragmatic measures that are required to obtain better results from interventions in the field.