Arq. Bras. Cardiol. 2021; 117(2): 327-328
Acute Myocardial Infarction Death Rates in Brazil – A Small Light at the End of the Tunnel
This Short Editorial is referred by the Research article "In- and Out-of-Hospital Deaths by Acute Myocardial Infarction in Brazilian State Capitals".
Epidemiological studies are the mainstay to better understand and plan regional healthcare. It is also very important to implement programs for quality-of-care evaluation and improvement. To fulfill that last objective, prospective registries and retrospective analysis of real-life clinical practices are essential. Continuous national registries can support continuous quality improvement at the hospital and country level and have proven to be effective in both Europe and North America. These systems use continuous data collection and provide online reports focusing on the processes of care and outcomes concerning common cardiovascular diseases and interventions. Another approach is to use data from non-dedicated national healthcare databases. However, most databases were not developed for such specific analysis and information is rather limited.
Lucena de Abreu et al. present an interesting study in this journal. They analyzed in-hospital and out-of-hospital death rates by acute myocardial infarction (AMI) from 2007 to 2016 in 27 Brazilian state capitals, representing approximately 24% of the Brazilian population. This topic is important, given that, in a literature review of medical journals over the past ten years, this information is lacking, and, for this reason, the reality in South America is virtually unknown. The last information available was a study published in 2020 with a retrospective review of temporal trends on mortality due to acute myocardial infarction in Brazil from 1996 to 2016, which showed a general decrease, especially in the capital cities, but regional inequalities were also observed.
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