[Trends in mortality in a Spanish prison from 1994-2004]

[corrected] Few works have focused on studying mortaty in prisons. The objective here is to study the causes and incidences of mortality in a Spanish prison.

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.

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.

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.