MORBIDITY IN CHILDREN INTERNED IN THE UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL OF MARINGÁ

Abstract

The hospital morbidity study makes it possible to know the most frequent and severest pathologies in the population assisted by a given hospital and specifically identify the deseases that cause children’s hospitalization, many of which may be prevented. Therefore the morbidity of the children hospitalized in the pediatric unit of the university hospital of Maringá was analyzed during the year of 1994. The data were collected from the Report of Internees in the Pediatric Unit. It was verified that 561 children were interned in that unit during 1994. The age ranged from newborn to sixteen-year-old children, reaching the highest frequency between one and four years (40.6%). Severe under one year of age represented 31.9% of the internees. So the great majority of the internees (72.5%) were children under the age of five. The sex-based distribution revealed that 54.5% of the internees were male children. The internees came from 39 municipalities of the State of Paraná, but the great majority (73.6%) came from the municipality of Maringá. The majority of the internees (60.5%) stayed in hospital for a period under five days. Respiratory system deseases appear as first cause of hospitalization (44.6%) for children of all ages, among which pneumonia, bronchopneumonia and bronchial asthma are outstanding. Infectious and parasitic deseases, especially severe diarrhea appeared as the second most frequent cause of hospitalization for children under five. Digestive system and genitourinary system deseases were the second most frequent cause of hospitalization for children between nine and ten, and between ten and sixteen, respectively.