Dengue em idosos no estado do Paraná: internações, custos, mortalidade e condicionantes socioeconômicos

Abstract

Dengue is a disease that affects five of the seven continents of the globe, with approximately three billion people who are susceptible to contracting this infection, with 390 million reported cases yearly. Therefore, it is a highly relevant disease that needs greater comprehension. This work aims to describe, by constructing two articles, the pattern of dengue fever in the state of Paraná, which has the highest incidence of dengue in Southern Brazil. The first article analyzes the notifications of dengue fever in Paraná from 2011 to 2015 amongst the general population and utilized demographic and socioeconomic data to construct clusters of regional health centers within the state by using multivariate analysis. The mortality rates of the elderly (age 60 and up) were also studied. The second article analyzed information regarding hospitalizations due to dengue (number of authorized hospitalizations from 2008 to 2015, hospital service expenditure, average length of hospital stays, average cost of a hospital stay, and daily hospitalization cost), separated by sex and age range (60 years and up and young adults from 20 to 39 years were also studied by means of comparison). This study is cross-sectional, descriptive, and quantitative, and the data was obtained from the Information Department of the Brazilian National Health Service (DATASUS), from the Secretary of Health of the state of Paraná (SESA-PR), and the Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics (IBGE). The results were analyzed by using multivariate, as well as cluster analysis. As for the distribution of dengue in the state of Paraná, the cluster with the best demographic and socioeconomic indicators had the fewest notifications for the disease, which suggests a correlation between these variables and the occurrence of dengue fever. The mortality rate increases progressively amongst the elderly. As for hospitalizations due to dengue, the young adult population presented the highest hospitalization costs, whereas the elderly had the highest average hospital stay for both sexes. It is possible to conclude that the elderly contingent presents greater susceptibility to the complications of dengue, with greater morbimortality, due to the high prevalence of comorbidities in this population. Those responsible for health management should take note of this fact in order to protect the elderly, who are more vulnerable to the complications of the disease.