Objective: to assess the coverage, completeness and reliability of data on live births in public maternity wards in São Paulo, Brazil.
Methods: data recorded in the Information System on Live Births (Sinasc) were compared with data collected in a field study (gold standard) during three months in 2011 in four maternity wards in hospital from the SUS network; kappa coefficient was calculated to assess agreement.
Results: 5,785 birth records were analyzed; Sinasc coverage was 99.8% and completeness was 96.2%; kappa values showed excellent and good agreement for maternal age (0.99), type of pregnancy, sex and newborn sex and birth weight (0.98), type of delivery (0.97), 1 minute (0.96) and 5th (0.95) minutes, previous live births (0.87) and education level (0.62); regular agreement for prenatal care visits (0.60) and gestational age (0.56); and weak agreement for previous stillbirths (0.09).
Conclusion: in the assessed hospitals, Sinasc presented high coverage, completeness and reliability.
Keywords:
Vital Statistics; Data Accuracy; Information System; Birth Certificate; Live Births
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a) ‘Study of the mother-child binomium: an imperious necessity to reach the Millennium Development Goals’.b) Apgar score: assessment of the newborn's vital signs after one and five minutes of life.
a) ‘Study of the mother-child binomium: an imperious necessity to reach the Millennium Development Goals’.b) Registers present in the Study of the mother-child binomium database and absent in the Sinasc database.b) Registers present in the Sinasc database and absent in the Study of the mother-child binomium database.d) Registers found in both databases.