No abstract

OBJECTIVE: To determine the impact of Human Deficiency Virus (HIV)/AcquiredImmunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) on the quality of life (QOL) on such patients in North India. DESIGN: A cross sectional study. SETTING: Outpatient setting and wards, Department of Medicine at a premier tertiary health care center, North India. PARTICIPANTS: Sixty-eight consecutive HIV/AIDS patients attending Medicine out patient department and/or admitted to the wards of All India Institute of Medical Sciences were administered a structured questionnaire by the HIV nurse coordinator. QOL was evaluated using the WHOQOL-Bref (Hindi) instrument. ANALYSIS: One way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was performed to find out significant difference between the clinical categories and socio-demographic variables on QOL domains. RESULTS: The overall QOL mean score on a scale of 0-100 was found to be 25.8. Similarly, on the scale of 0-100 the mean scores in the four domains of QOL in descending order were social (80.9); psychological (27.5); physical (17.7) and environmental domain (11.65). There was a significant difference of quality of life in the physical domain between asymptomatic patients (14.6) and patients with AIDS (10.43) defining illnesses (p<0.001) and asymptomatic and early symptomatic (12) patients (p=0.014). QOL in the psychological domain was significantly poorer in early symptomatic (12.1) (p<0.05) and AIDS patients (12.4) (p<0.006) as compared to asymptomatic individuals (14.2). A significant difference in QOL scores in the psychological domain was observed with respect to the educational status (p<0.037) and income of patients (p<0.048). Significantly better QOL scores in the physical (p<0.040) and environmental domain (p<0.017) were present with respect to the occupation of the patients. Patients with family support had better QOL scores in environmental domain. CONCLUSIONS: In our study, QOL is associated with education, income, occupation, family support and clinical categories of the patients.

We congratulate Halpin and colleagues 1 on their work to identify residual symptoms in patients with microbiological recovery from COVID‐19. The prevalence of residual symptoms in their cohort is much higher than estimates of 35% among out‐patient, 2 but comparable with recent cohorts of hospitalized patients (87%). 3 This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Aluminum phosphide when ingested is highly toxic with fatal dose as low as 1.5 g. The dominant clinical feature is severe hypotension refractory to dopamine.