Resumo

LARREA FABRA, Roberto  e  ROQUE ACOSTA, María del Carmen. Opportunistic diseases: Experiences in the South African AIDS population. Rev cubana med [online]. 2007, vol.46, n.3, pp. 0-0. ISSN 1561-302X.

It is known that opportunistic diseases are the leading causes of death from AIDS, in spite of their substantial reduction after the mass use of primary prophylaxis and of the highly efficient antiretroviral therapy. The AIDS infected cases in Bojanala that attended the AIDS Clinic in Rustenburg from April 2004 to November 2005, were studied. A specialized clinical evaluation   was carried out searching opportunistic diseases, and the specific investigations were  individualized for their diagnostic confirmation in order to know the morbidity and lethality from opportunistic diseases in this population, and the impact of tuberculosis on the studied immunodepressed population. 4 339 patients received attention, of whom 918 cases (21.2 %) developed opportunistic diseases and 98 died (10.7 %). Lethality in patients with opportunistic diseases was 2.8 times higher than that of the rest. Tuberculosis and esophageal candidiasis were the opportunistic diseases most frequently associated with this virus. It was concluded that   the opportunistic diseases are still a main cause of morbidity and lethality in AIDS, leaded by tuberculosis and esophagitis produced by Candida as regards frequency, and by the wasting syndrome, Kaposi’s sarcoma and Cryptococcus meningitis in severity, in spite of an improvement attained in survival, resulting from their attention and timely treatment.

Palavras-chave : Opportunistic diseases; AIDS.