hospitalizations and its related factors in hiv/aids patients in tehran, iran

background: hiv/aids patients are mainly hospitalized for hiv-related diseases and opportunistic infections. thisstudy was performed todetermine thecauses ofhospitalization and its related factors in hiv/aids patients in tehran’s imam khomeini hospital during 2009-2012. methods: thisstudy wasa descriptive cross-sectionalstudy . hiv patients admitted to the imam khomeini hospital were included in the study through censusmethod, during the study. demographic variables, hepatitis co-infection, cd4 count, history of receiving anti- retroviral therapy (art), cause of admission, length of hospitalization and patient's outcome were recorded . data were analyzed by spss software and by means of chi-square and mann whitney u tests . results: duringthe study,555hiv patientswere included in,84.9 % of whom were male, with the mean age of 36.59±8.51years and the average length of hospitalization for 16.04±18.82 days. opportunistic infections were the most common cause of hospitalization (46.5%) with prevalent of which was pulmonary tuberculosis being the most prevalent (37.6%). patientssuffering fromopportunistic infectionshadsignificantlylowercd4countand longer hospitalizationthan theother diseases. a significant difference was detected between patients outcome and the history of art. conclusion: low cd4 count may contribute to an increase in number and length of hospitalization in hiv/aids patients. accordingly, it appears to affect outcome of their treatment and art was accompanied by a drop in the death rate of hospitalized patients.