The Infant Life Defense Program of Health Department of Bauru City SP, Brazil, has diagnostic criteria for the inclusion of newborns. The diagnostic criteria combine eleven social and clinical indices of infant mortality risk, defined by in the light of a review of the literature and previous case studies. The indices are easily collected at the hospitals during delivery. The objective of this study is to propose an alternative diagnostic criteria, using the same social and clinical indices, of greater sensitivity and same proportion of children included in the program. The data on the newborns were collected between May 11, 1986 and November 10, 1987. The mortality period was defined as between 7 days and 6 months, which was the follow-up period for the infants enrolled in the program. The method of analysis was the determination for each index of the crude relative risk in a univariate analysis and the adjusted relative risk using the logistic regression procedure. A score system was constructed on the basis of the sum of the excess risk of each index.
Risk factors; Child health; Sensitivity and specificity (epidemiology)
