Epidemiological aspects of accidents in spiders State of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

The objective of this paper is to evaluate epidemiological aspects of accidents caused by spiders in the state of Rio Grande do Sul with data from the Information System for Notifiable Diseases (Sistema de Informa o de Agravos de Notifica o (Sinan). We analyzed, retrospectively, information about accidents caused by spiders in the stateof Rio Grande do Sul dating from the period between January 2001 and December 2006. The data was obtainedfrom the “Records of Accidents Caused by Poisonous Animals” for accidents that were treated and/or occurred inemergency units. There were 12,401 cases of accidents caused by spiders in the state of Rio Grande do Sul recordedin Sinan’s database for the period between 2001/2006. Most accidents were caused by spiders from the Loxoscelesgenus (1,429 cases). Regarding seasonality, the months between October and April had the highest incident rates.Most patients were males (59%) and the age groups most affected were those in their second and fifth decades of life.Regarding waiting time for treatment, 54% of the patients were treated within 3 hours. Classification regarding theseverity of poisoning was of 7,004 mild cases (56%), 3,482 moderate cases (28%), and 606 severe cases (5%). Thedata obtained allowed us to diagnose the need for epidemiological studies about accidents caused by spiders in thestate of Rio Grande do Sul, since there is little scientific production on this theme in the region.