Background: China's National Free Antiretroviral Treatment program has scaled-up rapidly since 2002, leading to a significant reduction of mortality among its participants. However, few studies have evaluated indicators for patient access to medical care and their association with mortality.
Methods: Patients enrolled into this national program between June 2002 and June 2009 for at least 7.5 months were retrospectively analyzed.
Results: Twenty-seven thousand five hundred four patients were included into the analysis, among whom 10,034 (37%) had at least 1 missed visit during the first 6 months of treatment. In Cox proportional hazard regression analysis, controlled for baseline demographic and clinical factors, patients with more missed visits had a higher risk of mortality, with an adjusted hazard ratio of 1.3 (95% confidence interval: 1.1 to 1.5) for 1-2 missed visits and 1.7 (95% confidence interval 1.4 to 2.2) for ≥3 missed visits compared with patients with no missed visits. In multivariate logistic regression models, factors independently associated with a higher likelihood of early missed visits included female gender, age >60, HIV transmission via injection drug use or via plasma donation compared with sexual transmission, baseline alanine aminotransferase >100 IU/L, having more symptoms at antiretroviral therapy initiation and receiving a didanosine-based regimen compared with lamivudine-based regimen. Lower baseline CD4 count was protective against missed visits.
Conclusions: Missing early visits occurred in a sizable number of patients in this cohort and was associated with a higher mortality rate. Early missed visits may serve as an early warning indicator to trigger additional outreach effort.