Dados do Trabalho

Título

Neurological causes of child mortality in 10 years, has something changed?

Resumo

Introduction:
Child mortality (CM) is a relevant indicator that analyzes the living conditions of a country because its high values ​​are alarming, and the national panorama is precarious, both from a social and economic point of view.
In Brazil, defects in the nervous system comprised 3,5% of infant deaths in the last ten years. Encephalitis and meningitis are the dominant viral infections related to the central nervous system that affect children and that, when aggravated, currently confer a high risk of mortality.

Objective:
The project aims to analyze the situation of CM resulting from neurological causes in the last 10 years, observing aspects such as the avoidability of deaths and using the TABNET tabulator for this analysis, which generates information linked to the Unified Health System (SUS).

Methods:
This is an ecological time-series study, which used the Health Information System database (TABNET), made available by the Department of Informatics of the Unified Health System (DATASUS). In the SUS Hospital Information System (SIH/SUS), information about infant (children with less than 1 year) deaths due to nervous system diseases (chapter VI of ICD-10) was collected. The period considered ranges from january/2010 to december/2020 and the data were divided by brazilian region. All the information was transferred for the software “Microsoft Excel” to be quantitatively analyzed. This work used secondary data from the public domain, therefore dispensing ethical appreciation.

Results:
In the southeast region of Brazil, a significantly higher decrease in the number of CM related to neurological causes was observed (R^2=0,79) in comparison to other regions of the country, although all of them had fewer reported deaths at the end of the the timeframe in comparison to the beginning (average of 35,8 less deaths). 34% of death causes were considered evitable, with 3% being reducible by immunization actions and 97% by adequate treatment and diagnosis, among these only epilepsy had an increase (50%) in the number of fatalities.

Conclusion:
This study provides insights regarding neurological causes of child mortality as well as their epidemiological rates. Although the total deaths had decreased in the chosen timeframe, the panorama appears to have changed in the later years with decreasing importance of meningitis and special attention needing to be given to epilepsy.

Palavras Chave

Child mortality; Epilepsy; meningitis