Abstract

The number of mesotheliomas diagnosed in Portugal and treated in hospitals of the National Health Service has been increasing, following the trends observed in other European countries. This is a malignant tumour of the serosa associated with old exposures to asbestos, that has not been properly valued due to the lack of records of utilisation and to the widespread conviction that asbestos were not a widely used material due to the mild weather „conditions in the country. This situation has led to the undervalorization of the notification of these cases to the competent authorities through the use of the compensation system of professional diseases, leading to an excessive overburden on the public health system, funded by the general state budget.

In this study a characterisation and analysis of admissions due to mesothelioma in public hospitals of the Portuguese National Health Service is performed, from Diagnosis Related Groups, as well as from the estimation of their costs distributed by some demographic and tumour characteristics.