Previous studies have shown a critical course in patients with miliary TB and in HIV-infected patients with TB [6, 21] . However, we did not find an association between a diagnosis of HIV and mortality in ICU patients. In fact, mortality in patients with TB-HIV coinfection seems to be related to the patient's overall degree of immunosuppression [21] . In spite of the free access to HAART in Brazil and the high level of immunosuppression of our study population, only 13% of patients were receiving HAART at the time of hospitalization, which is probably related to poor or no adherence to treatment. Even so, CD4/mm 3 count was not a predictor of death in these patients. Furthermore, serum albumin levels, reported by others as good predictors of CD4/mm 3 lymphocyte counts in patients with TB [22] , were not associated with mortality in our study. The lack of association between mortality and the HIV epidemic could be explained by the fact that our non-HIV population had a high proportion of comorbidities and were also too ill with high mortality rate.