How much longer can a person live once they are in the final stage of hiv/aids?

A couple days? weeks? Months? years?

In the final stages, weeks to months is the normal expectancy. The HIV cocktails have no effect in the end, and the person becomes susceptible to any number of diseases that the normal immune system could fight off. However in these cases, the diseases are fatal.

If someone has full-blown AIDS that doesn't necessarily mean that they're destined to die any time soon. As someone who has AIDS I can attest to that. Much depends on whether a person responds to any of the HIV cocktail drugs at all. Even if a person with AIDS has developed resistance to a particular class of drugs there may still be other options available. In the past year and a half there have been a couple of new drugs added that are geared primarily toward those who are highly resistant to previously existing cocktail drugs. So, there is certainly hope.

Beyond that, much depends on whether a person is suffering from an opportunistic infection, which is what ultimately costs someone their life. There are a number of these infections that are fairly common among those who have AIDS. It's difficult to know how long a person is going to live once they've been diagnosed with AIDS. There are a number of factors that are involved. The most important thing is to be in treatment and work with your doctor closely, monitoring your condition, and quickly reporting any significant changes to your health.

In final stage AIDS the life expectancy is a couple of months.

AIDS stands for Aquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome. A syndrome is a collection of symptoms. So to be diagnosed with AIDS you need to have had oppurtunistic infections which do not respond well to treatment and constantly relapse. Common oppurtunistic infections include Pneumocystis Carinii, Toxoplasmosis, Cryptosporidium and mycobacteria.

Patients with AIDS are also very likely to develop certain rare AIDS specific cancers: Kaposis sarcoma and non-hodgkins lymphoma being the most common.