Intensive care of patients with HIV infection: Utilization, critical illnesses, and outcomes

To examine intensive care unit (ICU) admission rates and diagnoses of patients with HIV infection, and to determine the outcomes of different critical illnesses, we analyzed data derived from the 63 patients who were admitted to an ICU from among the 1,130 adults with HIV infection who did not have AIDS at the time of enrollment in a multicenter prospective study. Patients were admitted and treated according to the judgment of their physicians. During 4,298 patient-years of follow-up for the entire cohort, there were 1,320 hospital admissions, of which 68 (5%) included admission to an ICU. Twenty-five (40%) of the patients admitted to the ICU died during that admission. Twenty-four patients (38%) were admitted with a principal diagnosis of lung disease; 11 had Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP), one of whom was coinfected with Aspergillus fumigatus and Legionella pneumophilia, and six of them (55%) died. Four had bacterial pneumonia, two had pulmonary edema caused by renal failure, and one each had pulm...