title: [Surveillance of health care errors. An overview of the published data in Argentina].
abstract: In the last decades, public health surveillance extended its scope of study to new fields, such as medical errors, in order to improve patient safety. This study was aimed to review all the evidence produced in Argentina about the surveillance of medical errors. An exhaustive literature search was performed. A total of 4656 abstracts were assessed (150 MEDLINE, 145 LILACS, and 4361 hand searched abstracts). Of them, 52 were analysed and 8 were considered relevant for health care error surveillance. Different approaches were used to study medical errors. Some of them have focused on patient safety and others on medical malpractice. There is still a need to improve the surveillance of this type of event. Mainly, the quality reports of study design and surveillance attributes were unclear. A critical appraisal and synthesis of all relevant studies on health care errors may help to understand not only the state of the art, but also to define research priorities.
authors.affiliation: Centro de Investigaciones Epidemiológicas, Academia Nacional de Medicina de Buenos Aires, Argentina.
authors.forename: Marcela A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Codermatz
authors.forename: Carolina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Trillo
authors.forename: Graciela
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Berenstein
authors.forename: Zulma
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Ortiz
mesh_terms: D001118:Argentina / Q000453:epidemiology; D003695:Delivery of Health Care / Q000592:standards* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D003951:Diagnostic Errors / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D019300:Medical Errors / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D008508:Medication Errors / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D010506:Periodicals as Topic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011159:Population Surveillance / Q000379:methods*; D012107:Research Design / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D017751:Safety Management; D013997:Time Factors