Survival of AIDS patients and characteristics of those who died over eight years of highly active antiretroviral therapy, at a referral center in northeast Brazil.

Introduction of highly active antiretroviral therapy has resulted in a significant reduction in morbimortality and significant changes in the causes of death among HIV/AIDS patients. For this reason, it has become essential to monitor survival and causes of death. We constructed a survival curve based on 597 adult patients notified as AIDS cases between 1997 and 2004, at the Hospital das Clínicas, Federal University of Pernambuco, Recife, Brazil. Among those patients, 150 (25%) progressed to death by December, 2005. Of these, 119 were studied in detail. The data were collected from notification files of the State Health Department and the State Mortality Information System, and were complemented by analysis of medical records. These 597 patients had a survival rate of 88%, 86% and 82% after one, two and five years, respectively, and a 75% likelihood of surviving to 1,984 days (66 months). Most of the deaths occurred during the first months after the diagnosis (median, 129 days). Patients who died were predominantly young men who had sexual exposure and came from Recife (the state capital) or its metropolitan region. When the patients were first seen, a large proportion had already presented severe signs of immunodeficiency. Comparing the patients within this group, the characteristics that were associated with lower survival were: male sex, hemoglobin < 10 mg/dL, lymphocytes < 1,000/mm(3), use of fewer therapeutic drugs and antiretroviral regimens and non-introduction of protease inhibitors. Most of them died from AIDS-related diseases, particularly undefined respiratory infections.