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Richard E. Chaisson, MD

JAMA. 1990;263(3):434-436.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

The image of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), for the past 9 years, has been the image of death. The devastation that the AIDS epidemic has wreaked on individuals, families, communities, and nations is imponderable. From the earliest case reports of AIDS,^1-3 the case-fatality rate has been high and survival short. Of the 112 241 persons with AIDS reported to the Centers for Disease Control as of October 31, 1989, fifty-nine percent are known to have died.⁴ In a study of the first 505 patients with AIDS in San Francisco, Calif, Bacchetti and coworkers⁵ found a median survival of 11 months. Patients diagnosed with Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, the most common AIDS-related opportunistic infection, had a median survival of 10 months, and virtually all had died within 2 years of diagnosis. Survival for other opportunistic infections was shorter, and persons with Kaposi's sarcoma, although initially living longer than other . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Baltimore, Md

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