An Epidemiologic and Clinicopathologic Overview of AIDS-Associated Pulmonary Kaposis Sarcoma

Before the first clinical descriptions of the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), Kaposi’s sarcoma (KS) was a rare tumor among Western populations, occurring in only 0.02–0.06% per 100,000 people (1 ). By June and July of 1981, however, reports from California and New York described large numbers of homosexual men who were afflicted with pigmented skin lesions of KS, either as an initial manifestation of a compromised immune system or following opportunistic infections such as oral candidiasis and Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP) (2 –4 ). Since then, approximately 15–25% of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected men in the United States have been diagnosed with KS (5 ). Typically, these tumors involve skin and lymph nodes and, less frequently, visceral organs (6 ).