INTRODUCTION: Examining the causes of hospitalization of children improves the understanding of disease profiles and the preparation of health care planning requirements to prevent the worsening of diseases and to avoid hospitalizations. OBJECTIVE: Identify in official databases the true causes of hospitalizations among children aged zero to four in order to better understand which illnesses have been responsible for their hospitalizations in Brazil. METHOD: Quantitative, descriptive, exploratory and inferring approach study, whose databases were collected from the National Health System Database (DATASUS), in the period between the years of 1998 to 2007. Databases were put into tables, quantitatively organized, and analyzed in descriptive and inferring statistics. Results indicated a heterogeneous morbidity distribution within the regions of the country, in which respiratory tract conditions prevail as the number one cause of hospitalizations of children aged from zero to four, followed by human parasitic infectious diseases. CONCLUSION: The databases studied allow a reflection on how healthcare facilities can organize themselves in order to fully implement health care for the outlined age group of zero-to-four-children, focusing on primary care, with the priority for prevention of respiratory conditions and human parasite infectious diseases, given these two groups are considered part of the conditions that occur due to outpatient care-sensitive causes and that may be avoided and/or minimized by actions in primary care.
Morbidity; Hospitalized child; Health profile; Epidemiology
