*Correspondence: giovanaandrade36@gmail.com.
Abstract
Background: Cerebral Palsy (CP) is a permanent disorder of the development of movement and posture
due to damage to the developing brain. Its incidence is 3:1,000 live births, representing
the main cause of physical disability among children. However, there are few studies
about the epidemiology of CP in Brazil, indispensable for the creation of health policies
and programs for prevention and assistance, which justifies the need for this paper.
Objective: To evaluate the epidemiological profile of hospitalizations for CP in childhood in
Brazil between 2017-2022.
Methods: This is an analytical observational ecological study using data on CP obtained from
the Hospital Morbidity System (SIH/SUS) of DATASUS. The period from January/2017 to
December/2022 was analyzed, using the variables: Year of processing, age group 1,
sex, ethnicity, region and hospitalizations. Microsoft Excel version 2010 was used
for data analysis.
Results: Between January/2017 and December/2022, there were 18,697 hospitalizations for CP
of individuals up to 19 years old in Brazil. Regarding sex, males predominated (1.34:1),
with the highest ratio in the North region (1.41:1). Most cases occurred in the 5-9
years old (28.99%) and 10-14 years old (26.23%) age groups. As for ethnicity, the
majority of patients (62.09%) had no identification, except in the South region (32.47%).
Among the cases with identification, the Brown ethnicity (17.52%) predominated in
the North, Northeast and Central-West regions, while white people (18.10%) prevailed
in the other regions, which may be related to the access to health services. Furthermore,
hospitalizations reduced 28.41% between 2019 and 2020. This drop was more expressive
in the North region (48.04%). Such decrease may be associated with the COVID-19 pandemic,
either due to underreporting by health professionals or less demand for health services
by the patients.
Conclusion: These data reveal a predominance of hospitalizations for CP in males, between 5-14
years old. The lack of identification of the patients’ ethnicity limited the analysis
of correlations between ethnicity and hospitalizations, demonstrating the need for
better identification of patients in health services. Further studies will be needed
to elucidate the possible relationship between male sex and hospitalization for CP,
in addition to the contribution of age group, ethnicity and the impacts of the COVID-19
pandemic.
