Assessment of the quality of notifications and investigations of congenital syphilis in Bahia, 2010-2021.

Abstract

Objective: To evaluate the quality of the information in the congenital syphilis notification and investigation forms as a tool for epidemiological surveillance to monitor children with the disease.

Methods: An ecological time-trend study was conducted using secondary data from the SINAN system in Bahia between 2010 and 2021. The study assessed the annual percentages of incompleteness, the proportional percentage variation, and the percentage of inconsistency. The temporal trend in incompleteness was analyzed using Spearman's correlation coefficient.

Results: Among the ten maternal variables evaluated, a reduction in data incompleteness was observed for seven of them. In the fields pertaining to the child, there was a reduction in the degree of data incompleteness for nine of the 11 variables evaluated (p ≤ 0.05). In the child follow-up, the study found that 86.7% of the investigation forms did not contain information on the nontreponemal test in peripheral blood at birth. For the treponemal test after 18 months, the percentage of forms lacking this information was 99.3%.

Conclusion: Despite the reduction in the number of incomplete fields on the congenital syphilis investigation form, the high percentage of forms lacking information on laboratory results compromises the assessment of clinical progression and follow-up of children with syphilis.