Early physicians' mortality in Espirito Santo: a decade trend/Mortalidade precoce de medicos no Espirito Santo: tendencia de uma decada

Introduction: Mortality data make it possible to develop indicators to guide the planning of health promotion and prevention actions in order to reduce mortality from preventable causes. However, there are no publications on physicians' mortality in the state of Espirito Santo, Brazil. Objectives: To describe mortality distribution and potential years of life lost from 2006 to 2015 among physicians who lived in Espirito Santo. Methods: This is a descriptive study of secondary data from the Mortality Information System of the Brazilian Ministry of Health. The distribution of socio- demographic variables and of basic cause of death was studied by absolute and relative frequencies. Potential years of life lost in each death were considered the years remaining from age at death up to the age limit of 70 years. Results: There were 20 deaths of female physicians (14.5%) and 118 (85.5%) of male physicians, with predominance of whites (87.9%) and married (56%) individuals. The main causes of death were neoplasms (39.1%), diseases of the circulatory system (19.6%), and external causes (19.6%). The majority of female and male deaths occurred from 60 to 69 years, but average death was significantly lower among women compared to men (respectively 58.3 and 67.0 years). Potential years of life lost totaled 1,226 years, with a mean of 14.6, which was greater in women (20.4) compared to men (13.4). Conclusions: Mortality trends observed in the general population were also present among physicians in Espirito Santo. However, contrary to the general population pattern, average death age was lower in women. Early mortality caused many lost years of life, especially among women. Keywords | mortality; potential years of life lost; occupational health; physicians. Introducao: Dados de mortalidade possibilitam elaborar indicadores para planejamento de acoes de promocao e prevencao em saude, visando a reducao da mortalidade por causas evitaveis. Nao existem publicacoes sobre mortalidade de medicos no estado do Espirito Santo. Objetivos: Descrever a distribuicao da mortalidade e os anos potenciais de vida perdidos de 2006 a 2015 entre medicos que residiam no Espirito Santo. Metodos: Estudo descritivo de dados secundarios do Sistema de Informacoes de Mortalidade do Ministerio da Saude. A distribuicao das variaveis sociodemograficas e da causa basica de obito foi estudada por frequencias absoluta e relativa. Nos anos potenciais de vida perdidos em cada obito, foram considerados os a