Human immunodeficiency virus infection among patients in a gynecology emergency department.

Abstract

To determine the extent of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection risk factors and the relationship to the clinical diagnosis in women seen in a busy inner-city gynecology emergency department. We performed a cross-sectional survey by offering routine voluntary HIV-1 antibody screening and obtaining HIV risk behavior profiles in 1033 (35%) of 2952 women seeking care in our gynecology emergency department during a 5-week period. The HIV seroprevalence was 2%. Six (35%) of the infected women reported a history of intravenous drug use, five (29%) reported a history of crack cocaine use, and five (29%) reported no risk factors for infection. Seropositive women were more likely than were seronegative women to have clinical symptoms consistent with pelvic inflammatory disease (18 versus 3%; P < .01). These data suggest that women attending the gynecology emergency room in our hospital are at substantial risk for HIV infection.