TY - JOUR PY - 2005// TI - Trends in mortality in a Spanish prison from 1994-2004 JO - Revista española de salud pública A1 - Remartinez, Enrique Jesus Vera A1 - Planelles Ramos, Manuel Vicente A1 - Garcia Guerrero, Julio SP - 673 EP - 682 VL - 79 IS - 6 N2 - BAKGROUND: Few works have focused on studying mortality in prisons. The objective here is to study the causes and incidences of mortality in a Spanish prison. METHODS: Descriptive study of the deaths in a prison between 01-01-1994 and 31-12-2004. The following variables were recorded: sex, date of death, HIV serology, number of CD4+ where relevant, and cause of death according to the following classification: death by HIV, by non-HIV disease, suicide, drug overdose and accidents. After indirect standardisation of incidence, we compared mortality in the Centre with the other Spanish prisons. We established mortaality rate tendencies by a linear regression model. RESULTS: 42 deaths, 41 men, 1 woman. Median age 33.10 years (27.72-36.12; IQR: 8.40). 30 (71.4%) HIV+, with a median of 177 CD4+ lymphocytes/microl. Twenty patients (45.24%) died from HIV, 15 (38.10%) from non-HIV diseases, 3 (7.14%) from suicide, 3 (7.14%) from drug overdose and 1 (2.38%) accidentally. Crude mortality rates corresponded to 12.605% per hundred of inmates/year in 1997 and 1.758%, inmates/year in 2003, with a decreasing trend of 0.976 deaths % per hundred, inmates/year (CI 95%: 0.399-1.552; p = 0.004). After standardising rates, we obtain 28.6 expected deaths daring the period, with an SMR of 1.4679. CONCLUSIONS: Although it follows a decreasing trend, the mortality rate obtained during the study period was higher than expected. The main cause of mortality was acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. LA - SN - 1135-5727 UR - http://dx.doi.org/ ID - ref1 ER -