Agreement between underlying cause and preventability of infant deaths before and after the investigation in Recife, Pernambuco State, Brazil, 2014

Objective: to assess the agreement and describe the causes and preventability of infant deaths before and after the investigation. Methods: investigation files and death certificates of infants under one year, of mothers living in Recife, Brazil, in 2014 were used; the Cohen kappa index was adopted for agreement analysis of the underlying causes of death; the list of preventable causes of deaths by interventions of the Brazilian National Health System was also adopted. Results: 183 infant deaths were analyzed, of which 117 (63.9%) had the underlying cause revised; before the investigation, 170 (92.2%) deaths were considered preventable, and after investigation, 178 (97.3%); there was reasonable agreement (0.338) regarding the underlying causes of death, and moderate (0.439) for preventability. Conclusion: infant mortality surveillance enabled the improvement of vital events information, contributing to the progress in the specification of underlying causes of death and in the preventability of infant death.