Microcephaly in Pernambuco State, Brazil: epidemiological characteristics and evaluation of the diagnostic accuracy of cutoff points for reporting suspected cases.

The increase in the number of reported cases of microcephaly in Pernambuco State, and Northeast Brazil, characterized an epidemic that led the Brazilian Ministry of Health to declare a national public health emergency. The Brazilian Ministry of Health initially defined suspected cases as newborns with gestational age (GA) ≥ 37 weeks and head circumference (HC) ≤ 33cm, but in December 2015 this cutoff was lowered to 32cm. The current study aimed to estimate the accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity of different cutoff points for HC, using ROC curves, with the Fenton and Intergrowth (2014) curves as the gold standard. The study described cases reported in Pernambuco from August 8 to November 28, 2015, according to sex and GA categories. The Fenton and Intergrowth methods provide HC growth curves according to GA and sex, and microcephaly is defined as a newborn with HC below the 3rd percentile in these distributions. Of the 684 reported cases, 599 were term or post-term neonates. For these, the analyses with ROC curves show that according to the Fenton criterion the cutoff point with the largest area under the ROC curve, with sensitivity greater than specificity, is 32cm for both sexes. Using the Intergrowth method and following the same criteria, the cutoff points are 32cm and 31.5cm for males and females, respectively. The cutoff point identified by the Fenton method (32cm) coincided with the Brazilian Ministry of Health recommendation. Adopting Intergrowth as the standard, the choice would be 32cm for males and 31.5cm for females. The study identified the need to conduct critical and on-going analyses to evaluate cutoff points, including other characteristics for microcephaly case definition

Avaliação da implantação do Sistema de Informação de Agravos de Notificação em Pernambuco, 2014

Resumo Objetivo: avaliar a implantação do Sistema de Informação de Agravos de Notificação (Sinan) de Pernambuco, Brasil, 2014. Métodos: pesquisa avaliativa com dados primários (entrevistas) e secundários (documentos/dados do Sinan) da Secretaria Estadual e Regionais de Saúde, para estimar o grau de implantação, confrontando indicadores de estrutura e processo com os de resultado. Resultados: o Sinan mostrou-se parcialmente implantado nos níveis central (77,2%) e regional (61,2%), variando neste nível de 54,7 a 71,6%; os componentes notificação/investigação (90,0%) e processamento dos dados (84,1%) estavam implantados; análise/divulgação (61,6%), parcialmente implantada; monitoramento (53,4%) e gestão (56,8%), com implantação incipiente; observou-se ausência de planejamento e boletins divulgados; 46,9% dos municípios encerraram oportunamente as notificações compulsórias; 68,7% enviaram lotes regularmente, ocorrendo 3,0% de duplicação de casos de tuberculose. Conclusão: o Sinan mostrou-se parcialmente implantado em Pernambuco, por falhas no monitoramento e gestão, influenciando negativamente nos resultados do sistema; suas fortalezas relacionaram-se à notificação, investigação e processamento dos dados