OBJECTIVETo analyze the death causes of 345 cases with HIV/AIDS in Guangdong area.

METHODSThe situations of 345 hospitalized death cases with HIV/AIDS were conducted by retrospective analysis.

RESULTS(1)There were total 3406 hospitalized cases with HIV/AIDS in a hospital from January 2001 to December 2011 and 345 cases died, the fatality rate was 10. 13%. Since 2005 the introduction of free anti-viral treatment, the fatality rate of HIV/AIDS declined. The fatality rate of the patients whose CD4+ T lymphocyte counts <200 cells/microl was 14.61% (299/2046) and it was significantly higher than that of patients whose CD4 T lymphocyte counts >or=200 cells/microl (P <0.01). (2) 99.42% of the death cases had more than one kind of opportunistic infections (OI) and there were 924 cases of OI totally. 84. 64% of OI related to the death directly. Fungal infection was the most common in OI, followed by bacterial infection. Most OI occurred in the lungs, mouth, other systemic disseminated diseases, gastrointestine, central nerver system, septicemia, skin. The AIDS defining opportunistic infections such as several pneumonia, disseminated penicilliosis marneffei and CNS infections accounted for 29.65%. Other factors that caused HIV/AIDS death included opportunistic tumors, HIV related disease and non AIDS-related disease accounted for 15.36%. No accepted effective highly active antiretroviral therapy (HARRT) also constituted factors of death. Among cases which accepted HARRT treatment, only 6.96% had the period of treatment over three months.

CONCLUSIONThe fatality rate of end-stage AIDS patients was high and the opportunistic infections was the most important cause of death. Early diagnosis and treatment for opportunistic infections, timely effective HARRT were the key to improve the quality of life of AIDS patients.