Overall, 44 (65.7%) patients died, of whom 38 (56.7%) died in ICU and 6 (8.9%) died after been transferred to the ward. The Kaplan-Meier survival curve is showed in Figure 1 . Of the 23 patients who were discharged from the hospital, 17 (73.9%) were cured, 2 (8.7%) abandoned the treatment after 1 month, and 4 (17.4%) died after a mean of 3.7 ± 2.5 months. As shown in Table 2 , early ICU admission was associated with mortality (p = 0.004). Early ICU admission was also associated with delayed diagnosis (p = 0.001) and acute renal failure (p = 0.030). Miliary radiologic pattern and smear-positive sputum were protective factors (p = 0.016 and 0.030, respectively). Sixty three (94%) patients used rifampicin, isoniazid and pirazynamid; 3 (4.5%) used streptomycin, isoniazid and ethambutol; 1(1.5%) used rifampicin, isoniazid and ethambutol. Only 3 patients did not receive rifampicin-based regimen because of hepatotoxicity. Nonsurvivors used more rifampicin-based regimens compared to survivors (p = 0.037). Neither hypoalbuminemia (p = 0.111) nor hepatic dysfunction (p = 0.999) had effect on mortality. We have found no association between diagnosis of HIV and mortality (p = 0.999), regardless of level of immunosuppression and use of HAART. Although not statistically significant, a higher mortality rate was found in patients with acute renal failure (p = 0.133). VAP was more common in survivors than in nonsurvivors (p = 0.041). The mean duration of mechanical ventilation was not statistically different between survivors and non-survivors (p = 0.228). All predictors with p values ≤ 0.20 in the univariate analysis were retained in the Cox-proportional hazard model. The variables alcoholism, corticosteroid use, desnutrition, early ICU admission, miliary radiological pattern, WBC > 12000 mm -3 , rifampicin-based regimens, hepatotoxicity, septic shock, VAP and acute renal failure, adjusted by sex and age, were introduced into the forward conditional Cox regression model, which showed that early ICU admission (HR 4.93, 95% CI 2.44 -9.97, p < 0.001) and VAP (HR 0.26-0.12, 95% CI 0.12 -0.59, p = 0.001) were factors affecting the in-hospital mortality rate (Figure 2 ).