Mortality Decreases with Retention in Care

Taking good care of patients who never show up is impossible, but translating this self-evident truth into numerical terms has not been easy. Several formal metrics for measuring “retention in care” for HIV-infected patients have been proposed, and a large study now evaluates their validity.

Researchers correlated patterns of clinic attendance with mortality among 3672 antiretroviral therapy (ART)-naive HIV-infected patients (80% male, 53% white; mean baseline CD4 count, 220 cells/mm³) starting combination ART at one of five clinics in the U.S. between 2000 and 2010. Two years after enrollment, about 60% met at least one of two slightly different accepted definitions of retention in care, both of which require at least four clinic visits spa…