prevalencia

743

Prevalence of self reported chronic diseases and health services consumption from the National
Household Sample Survey of 1998 in Brazil

Márcia Furquim de Almeida 1
Rita Barradas Barata 2
Cláudia Valencia Montero 3
Zilda Pereira da Silva 4

1 Departamento de
Epidemiologia da
Faculdade de Saúde
Pública da USP.
Av. Dr. Arnaldo 715,
01246-904 São Paulo SP. [e-mail] 2 Departamento de
Medicina Social da
Faculdade de Ciências
Médicas da Santa Casa de São Paulo.
3 Centro de Vigilância
Epidemiológica Prof.
Alexandre Vranjac/SES/SP.
4 Fundação SEADE.

Abstract The prevalence and the distribution of chronic diseases became of overwhelming importance with the ageing process of Brazilian population. These diseases are responsible by an increased demand of health services. It was analyzed the data from the sample of the Health
Supplement of PNAD/98 (National Household
Sample Survey). It was used the data from all self reported chronic diseases by sociodemographic variables and health services consumption. It was employed prevalence ratios and odds ratios, with 95% confidence interval to evaluate the presence of possible associations. As expected it was observed an increase of chronic diseases prevalence with age; and a decrease with educational and income level. It was found higher rates of chronic diseases in women and in the group without access to private health insurance. Consumption of health services was 1.8 fold for the chronic diseases group. It was not found an association between the mean number of medical visits and income level, although it was observed a clear differential in hospitalization rates, with higher rates of hospitalization in the higher income brackets. It was not also found differences of the mean number of medical visits between the owners of private health insurance and the users of the
Brazilian National Health System (SUS).
Key words Self reported chronic diseases,
Prevalence,