CAVALCANTE, C. A.; http://lattes.cnpq.br/4457295475240965; CAVALCANTE, Caroline Alves.
Resumo:
Currently Leprosy is considered a public health problem by the functional disabilities caused
by the disease when not early treated, furthermore due to the fact that Brazil has the secondhighest
global prevalence of leprosy, this study aims to discuss the clinical-epidemiological
profile of morbimortality caused by leprosy in the Brazilian regions between 2010 and 2014.
Leprosy is an infectious-contagious disease treatable in Primary Care, for this reason hospital
morbimortality is directly linked to late diagnosis and, therefore, Primary Health Care
mechanism’s failure. This work is an ecological, retrospective, descriptive and quantitative
study, with data obtained of the Department of Health. The study found that there were 27,798
hospitalizations and 348 deaths in that time period. The rate of hospitalizations by region
discreetly fluctuated over the years, but there was no significant reduction of this rate at the end
of 2014 (reduction of only 2.46%); given the difference in the reduction rate of Leprosy new
cases in Brazil in the same period, 11%. There was a growing trend of hospitalizations in the
southern region, furthermore men were hospitalized almost twice as often as women in all
regions of the country. More hospitalizations were observed in the fourth and fifth decades of
life and there was a preponderance of hospitalizations in the public sector only in the Northeast
when compared to the private sector. It was also observed a higher mortality rate in the
Northeast region (2011- 2014) when compared to the other regions. On average, annual
hospitalization costs in Brazil are around three million annually. It is concluded that the present
study helps to understand the existence of flaws in the mechanisms of early diagnosis of the
disease, since sequels due to late diagnosis are the main causes of hospitalization and death due
to leprosy.