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External causes and hence rates, of morbidity and mortality have been increasing substantially in Brazil and resulting in heavy economic and social burdens, among them hospital costs. To investigate and quantify hospitalizations for injuries and poisoning in the Unified Health System (UHS) hospitals or those licensed by it in Brazil and in the state of Sao Paulo, in order to determine the epidemiological characteristics of these patients and the hospital costs to the government, based on variables considered important. Hospitalizations in UHS or UHS licensed hospitals in the year 2000 were studied.

There are few epidemiological studies on traumatic brain injury (TBI), and those that allow broad comparative analyses of this problem are even more scarce, due to methodological obstacles. Usually, the studies address head injury (they include the cranial envelopments and content) but are reported as TBI, given the difficulty of mutual exclusion. It is also common for them to be centered at specific severity levels, only for hospitalized victims or according to the external cause, such as traffic accidents. With full respect to these limits, this study had as its objective the estimation of the TBI incidence in patients resident and in-hospital, in the hospital network in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, in 1997, as well as the estimation of TBI-caused mortality amongst external causes, at this same time and locale. Data for the study consisted of Ministério da Saúde data on hospital discharges, analyzed based on Autorizações de Internação Hospitalar (AIH) and obituary data on external causes, contained in the Programa de Aprimoramento das Informações de Mortalidade (PROAIM) data base. It was found that 29 717 patients were hospitalized due to lesions and poisoning; of these 3 635 (12%) had TBI; the hospitalization rate was 0.36/1000 pop.; and hospital mortality was 10%. The mortality coefficient due to external causes was 87.3/100 000 pop. Minimum TBI mortality rate is estimated at a minimum of 26.2 and a maximum of 39.3/100000 pop.

A prospective and longitudinal study about head injury victims was carried out in order to identify their return to productivity after 6 months and 1 year post-trauma and to analyze the relationship between their return to work and their educational level as well as to determine the relationship between their return to work and their type of job before the onset of the injury. Of the 72 patients who were students or employees pre-injury, or housewives at the time of injury, the majority (73.6%) had returned to productivity 6 months after onset of injury. Of the victims who had returned to productivity, 25.0% had changed their original occupations or reported significant problems when returning to productivity. Baseline return was achieved in 48.6% of the victims at 6 months. Return to productivity was higher at 1 year after injury than at 6 months. When the relationship between return to work and educational level and job type was analyzed, return to work was not related to educational level or job type.

The objective of this retrospective study is to characterize the nature and severity of injuries of hospitalized traffic accident victims using the "Abbreviated Injury Scale" (AIS). Two-hundred and twenty such patients in a trauma reference hospital in Sao Paulo, Brazil were assessed. One-hundred and eleven of them were pedestrians, eighty-three vehicular passengers and twenty-six motorcyclists. The most common injuries were of the limbs, pelvic girdle and head/neck. Injury severity in all these patients was AIS = 3. Two-thirds of the forty-five victims who died were pedestrians.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to discover the differences among victims who had traumatic brain injury due to traffic accidents., Methods: Medical record of the head injury patients were analyzed according to their classification as traffic accident victims (pedestrian, motorcyclist or passenger and other motor vehicle deriver or passenger), age, gender, admission type (admitted from scene of the injury or from another hospital), duration of hospitalization, type of head injury, types of lesions present in other body segments and mortality. Patient's injury severity was measured by Injury Severity Score and head injury severity was analyzed using the ranking on the Glasgow Coma Scale, recorded by neurosurgeons during their first neuro assessment. All head injured patients admitted to a trauma center in S. Paulo city over a four-month period from March through June 1993, were included in the study. The sample was of 156 victims, with subsets of 80 pedestrians, 26 occupants of motorcycles and 50 occupants of other motor vehicles., Results and Conclusion: The results of this study showed that the mortality rate was higher in the pedestrian subset (25.0%) than among other victims and higher for motorcycle occupants (19.2%) than for motor vehicle victims (8.0%). Statistical differences between the subsets were established when the head injury severity variable was analyzed using the Glasgow Coma Scale. On the other hand, the differences between the three subsets was not statistically significant when the measurement used was the Injury Severity Score. Analyses of other variables showed important differences among subset distributions.

This study is part of a project about ICU's characteristics in São Paulo city. This article describes the continuing education programs for nursing staff. 43 ICUs were analysed and the questionnaire answered by the ICU nurse coordinator was used to collect data. Results showed that 34 (79.1%) of the ICUs have initial program for training each nursing staff category and 18 (41.9%) had regular continuing education program focusing primarily on nursing procedures and routines and the update in pathologies. Continuing education programs are developed primarily by ICU's nurses. 50.2% of the nurses answered that they attended specialisation/extension courses too, in Medical Surgical Nursing or in other areas or in both areas. Due to this result and the development of the ICU's nurses as specialists, some suggestions are presented to improve the continuing education program in these Units.

This is an analysis about critical care research production and publication as well as nursing research's profile in Brazil, focusing on the research producer, the research product and the product consumer.

This study is the first part in a series of the articles reporting results of a project conducted to analyse the structural resources of ICUs in São Paulo city. This article describes the characteristics of those Units, considering the quantity and geographic location, bed number, maintainer entity, type of assistance, type of client, as well the percentage of beds usage and length of stay. Forty three ICUs were analysed and a questionnaire answered by the ICU nurse coordinator was used to collect data. The results showed that the number of ICUs in the hospital varied from 1 to 4, being more frequently those with only one ICU (68.8%). 79.2% of the Units were in private hospitals, located in the central area of the city. ICU beds represented 8.0% of the total hospital beds and there was an average of 10 beds per Unit. There was a predominance of general ICUs (60.5%), destined only for adult patients (51.2%) and for clinical-surgical treatment (95.3%). The percentage of beds usage in majority of ICU was between 80 to 100% and the length of stay was 4,5 days.

The severity of traumas in hospitalized patients was characterized by means of the Injury Severity Score (ISS) was studied prospectively. One hundred trauma patients hospitalized in a trauma referral health facility located in S. Paulo, Brazil, were analyzed. Of the total number of patients, 68 had blunt trauma and 32 penetrating trauma. As to ISS, it was discovered that 53.0% of the blunt trauma patients had mild trauma (ISS 1-15), 29.4% moderate trauma (ISS 16-24), and 17.6% showed severe trauma (ISS 25); 34.4% of the penetrating trauma patients had mild trauma, 18.7% moderate trauma and 46.9% severe trauma. The mean and standard deviations relating to the ISS of blut and penetrating trauma patients were, respectively, 14.9 +/- 8.1 and 20.8 +/- 11.0; the respective mortality rates were of 11.8% and 12.5%.

Cancer pain relief is not yet adequate, but there are resources for this. Professional's misconception and the tabu about that pain in cancer is inevitable have been contributing to this problem. Important nurses' knowledge lacuna about pain relief in cancer was found by this study. The WHO program about pain relief in cancer is presented too.

It is a preliminary study testing the applicability of a method for knowledge characterization based on graphs theory. 11 (eleven) nurses working in a medical surgical intensive care unit including neurological patients constructed graphs to explain the diagnostic process. The results show that: the knowledge structure is in a developing stage; there is agreement regarding to diagnosis formulation and the data base on which it is founded is diversified and link to a specified form of related causes. The method demonstrated to be feasible and should be reapplied on a larger population.

The goal of this study was to analyse the teaching-learning process of the pupil examination, in two aspects: the pupil diameter (DP), obtained by measurement and photomotor reflex (RFM), by subjective judgement. The sample was composed by 46 students of 4th semester in Nursing Undergraduate Course of University of São Paulo. The study was developed in two phases: the first was at nursing laboratory and the second, at clinical practice. The findings seemed to indicate that the learning was done because there was high level of agreement among students in their observation, development of an ability and a specific knowledge. The major difficulties was at clinical practice.

The high incidence and low resolution of the pain after surgery are shown in international literature. During the five days after the cardiac and abdominal surgery, these patients were asked once a day about their pain. Nearly 50% of the patients answers showed pain complaints. At the cardiac patients 47% did not take treatment during the last four hours, although the medicine was prescribed by the doctor to be used in eventual necessity. Similar occurrences happened with abdominal patients where no medicine was given in 68.2% events of their pain complaints. So, we find that the under-identification and undertreatment of the pain are like the other studies.