SURVIVAL DIFFERENCES AND TRENDS IN PATIENTS WITH AIDS IN THE UNITED-STATES

The AIDS surveillance system maintained by the Centers for Disease Con trol and Prevention (CDC) provides a unique data base for estimating s urvival after a diagnosis of AIDS for the general AIDS population in t he United States. Because patients enrolled in most AIDS clinical tria l studies receive unusual medical care that may not be available to th e general public and typically have relatively longer survival time, e stimates obtained from these studies may not be of direct use in asses sing the national health-care needs. Furthermore, such studies are usu ally of short duration and may not be very informative for long-term h ealth-policy planning. We present survival estimates obtained from the CDC surveillance data for the adult/adolescent AIDS population in the United States and compare their survival and trend in survival on gen der, sexual behavior, and injection-drug use status. These estimates p rovide information for mortality risk after an AIDS diagnosis over a p eriod of 8 years and for trend of survival during the period between 1 983 and 1991.