Information on the ocular findings in pediatric patients with HIV infection has appeared limited in the literature,1 and hence this study was designed to evaluate this situation in Brazil.

A retrospective review of 111 charts of children below the age of 13 years, admitted to the Pediatric Infectious Disease Service of Ribeirão Preto Clinical Hospital between July and December 2004, was performed after approval of the Local Ethics Committee. This hospital serves a population of more than one million people, including urban and rural areas. All patients were seropositive for HIV, in which 65 patients (59%) were confirmed as having AIDS. The male/female proportion was 0.63 : 1, and mean age was 2.2±2.5 years. One hundred and two patients (93%) had HIV vertical transmission and nine (7%) had unknown transmission. All 65 AIDS patients and the other 31 (27.9%) patients who have complained of eye problems underwent ophthalmic examination, and 19 (19.8%) of those examined had ocular pathologic findings that were summarized with their CDC classification in Table 1.

Table 1 Clinical summary of pediatric HIV patients with abnormal ocular examination
Full size table

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