Imaging 14:1IV-1 (2002)
© 2002 The British Institute of Radiology
Mini-symposium: Imaging in AIDS/HIV
S P G Padley
Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, London SW10 9NH, UK
The worldwide impact of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) has been unlike any other disease in the modern era, and the rate of spread in industrial countries and in the developing world has caused great alarm. The incidence of AIDS in the UK and worldwide is continuing to increase. The initial alterations in behaviour patterns that reduced human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) spread in the UK in the 1980s may well prove to have been a temporary respite. This changing nature of the HIV and AIDS epidemic in the UK has been highlighted in the first article in this issue, together with the current hopes for ongoing work in vaccine development. The considerable impact of modern anti-retroviral treatment regimens is also highlighted, together with their effects on disease progression.
In the developing world, and within both native and immigrant populations in the UK, there is an important group of paediatric patients with HIV. Most of these children have acquired HIV by vertical transmission from mother to child, occurring either in utero or perinatally. Imaging of this patient group is dealt with in the second article in this issue.
In centres of HIV treatment it is well recognized that imaging of HIV-related disease is extremely challenging. Increasingly, HIV patients are no longer confined to metropolitan centres, and radiologists everywhere must be ever more aware of the wide range of manifestations of HIV infection and AIDS that may be encountered in any modern imaging department. Thus, the remaining four articles (organized by body system) concentrate on the imaging of HIV and its complicating infections and neoplasms, accentuating the more typical and common appearances, but also including reference to less frequently encountered disease manifestations.
