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Patient retention is critical to the management of chronic diseases such as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV); hence, accurate measures of loss to follow-up (LTF) are important. Many different LTF definitions have been proposed. In a cohort of 9,692 HIV-infected patients initiating antiretroviral therapy in Mozambique from 2006 to 2011, we investigated the impact of the definition of LTF on estimated rates of LTF, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS)-defining events, and death by applying 17 different definitions of LTF gleaned from HIV literature. We further investigated the impact of 4 specific components of the LTF definitions. Cumulative incidences of LTF and AIDS-defining events were estimated by treating death as a competing risk; Kaplan-Meier techniques and variations to account for informative censoring were used to estimate rates of mortality. Estimates of LTF 2 years after treatment initiation …