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... |