O Mundo da Saúde (Apr 2017)
Characterization of leprosy in children under 15 years in an important municipality of north-eastern Brazil
Abstract
The presence of leprosy in children younger than 15 years is a strong indicator of the maintenance of the epidemiological chain of transmission and evidences of the early exposure. This study aims to identify the family, clinical and epidemiological characteristics of individuals younger than 15 years who were diagnosed with leprosy in the city of Juazeiro-BA. This is an observational, cross-sectional and descriptive study. The study population consisted of all cases of leprosy diagnosed in children under 15 between 2012 and 2014, in the city of Juazeiro-BA. The Complementary Protocol for the Diagnostic Investigation of Cases of Leprosy in Children Under 15 (PCID <15) was used as the data source. The protocol was completed at the time of diagnosis at the Leprosy Reference Centre of the municipality under study. This document is part of the medical records of the patients being treated, and is filed in the outpatient clinic. After the data collection, the data were analyzed using the SPSS software version 20. Adoption of significance was 95%. 42 cases were diagnosed in the age group studied, and the mean annual detection coefficient was 24.85 cases / 100,000 individuals in this age group. Of the total, 66.7% were female. The mean age of the girls was lower than the mean age of the boys, with a significant difference between the genders (p = 0.021). The anamnesis showed that in 33.3% of the cases, the first diagnosis was wrong and leprosy was treated as other diseases. It is also noted that 54.8% of patients had a family history of leprosy. The tuberculoid form and paucibacillary operational classification stood out (88.0% and 90.5%, respectively). The study showed that PCID <15 years is an important instrument capable of identifying problems in the quality of leprosy services, such as the fragility in the diagnosis of the disease in the population under 15 years.
