Introduction The assessment of the disabled person can be carried out through the application of various instruments, such as the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF). It has been used by INSS since 2011 for the concession of disability pension (DP) benefit. Since its implementation as an evaluation instrument, little is known about the results of ICF application and the applicant`s profile. For this reason, it is important to retrospectively analyse the profile of the individuals that require this benefit, in relation to gender, age, educational level and previous main occupation.

Methods A retrospective study was carried out involving the evaluation of 173 DP applicants from the Brazilian National Social Security Institute (INSS) from March 2016 until December 2016 and it was collected the following data: gender, age, educational level, marital status, International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) and previous main occupation. The data were divided according to the main prevalent categories.

Results It was demonstrated that most applicants were female, single, with complete primary education and average age of 43 years-old, with the most frequent distribution of requests occurred between 55 and 59 years-old, the most of them were agricultural wokers (42%). In regard to ICD-10 classification, the most common disorders were: psychiatric (25,52%) followed by neurological/muscle (15,90%), cardiovascular (10,46%) and trauma/sequelae (8,36%) diseases.

Discussion It was concluded that most applicants for the DP benefits were agricultural female workers with low education presenting mainly with psychiatric, neurological, cardiologic and trauma diseases. The use of the ICF as an instrument can contribute to the real living conditions of people with disabilities being included in the statistics, allowing actions and decisions to be guided, policies and interventions defined and budgets allocated.