Basing their research on data from official statistics, the Brazilian adolescent mortality for the year 1980, is studied. Despite the low over-all adolescent mortality rate some important causes of death were analysed. Almost half the deaths were due to external causes (47.22%). Diseases of the circulatory system were the second largest group of causes of death (6.87%), followed by infectious diseases (6.36%) and neoplasms (5.98%). Complications of pregnancy, delivery and puerperium were responsible for 4 per cent of the deaths of women from 10 to 19 years of age. For women aged 15 to 19, these deaths accounted for 6.14% of all deaths, thus taking, for this specific age-group, 6th place among the principal causes of death. In the group with complications related to pregnancy the principal causes of death were hypertension, puerperal infections, hemorrhages and abortion.
Adolescence; Mortality; Death causes; Maternal mortality