Análise da qualidade dos dados populacionais e registros de óbitos dos centenários do semiárido brasileiro no período de 2000 a 2020

Abstract

There is an overrated historic in census population counting of Brazilian centenarians and the death records of these individuals have been presenting quality problems that can seriously compromise the trust of the indicators that come from them, whose issues become even more problematic when it comes to regions such as the Brazilian Semiarid, one of the most unjust in Latin America. From this perspective, the present study aimed to analyze the quality of population data and death records of centenarians in the Brazilian Semiarid in the period from 2000 to 2020. This is an ecological, cross-sectional study, with a quantitative approach, referring to death records and population data of individuals aged 100 years or more from 1,226 municipalities, regionalized in the urban, intermediate and rural categories of the Brazilian Semiarid region. The application of this proposal revealed an overestimation of centenarians in the Brazilian Semi-arid region, whose population size has grown over the years. The quality improved from the poor to regular classification between the 2000 and 2010 censuses. However, from the point of view of international comparability, the data are still considered of "low" quality, especially in those areas characterized as rural. In the analysis of the quality of death records there was also an important advance in the period, but the coverage of deaths as a whole did not reach levels above 90%. The percentage of poorly defined causes was classified as having "poor" quality, 16% - 30%, for most of the regionalized areas. In the study of the completeness of the variables contained in Death Certificates, the variable "Education" showed the highest percentages of incompleteness 44.6% among the others studied. The variable "Medical care" presented percentages of missings above 50% in all analyzed situations. After the redistribution of the Ill-Defined Causes, the group of circulatory system diseases was the most frequent defined cause among the centenarians, followed by respiratory system diseases and endocrine, nutritional and metabolic diseases, together accounting for about 78% of deaths of the centenarians after the redistribution. The analysis of the factors associated with the registration of ill-defined causes showed that single, separated or divorced people, residents of rural/intermediate municipalities, as well as those centenarians who died outside of health facilities and without medical assistance have a greater chance of presenting their ill-defined death records. It is expected that this study may bring more assertive lights for a better understanding of the situation of population counting data and death records, as well as assist in evaluations and decision-making in health care policies, programs and geriatric services and assistance to this population so little studied despite the accelerated aging process in which the Brazilian population is found, particularly in the semi-arid region.