Bacterial sepsis in Brazilian children: a trend analysis from 1992 to 2006.

BACKGROUND: The objective of this study was to determine the epidemiology of hospitalized pediatric sepsis in Brazil (1992-2006) and to compare mortality caused by sepsis to that caused by other major childhood diseases. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We performed a retrospective descriptive study of hospital admissions using a government database of all hospital affiliated with the Brazilian health system. We studied all hospitalizations in children from 28 days through 19 years with diagnosis of bacterial sepsis defined by the criteria of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), (Appendix S1). Based on the data studied from 1992 through 2006, the pediatric hospital mortality rate was 1.23% and there were 556,073 pediatric admissions with bacterial sepsis with a mean mortality rate of 19.9%. There was a case reduction of 67% over 1992-2006 (p