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.
epidemiology; morbidity; mortality; head injury
