[Mortality amenable to health care services and health inequalities among Italian Regions].

Objectives: to investigate differences in amenable mortality among Italian Regions using the lists of causes of death conceived by Nolte and McKee, and Tobias and Yeh, and assess whether these differences are in part attributable to the list used. We also estimated the contribution of amenable mortality to the gaps in all-cause mortality among North, Centre and South of Italy.

Design: cross-sectional study.

Amenable mortality as a performance indicator of Italian health-care services.

Background: Mortality amenable to health-care services ('amenable mortality') has been defined as "premature deaths that should not occur in the presence of timely and effective health care" and as "conditions for which effective clinical interventions exist." We analyzed the regional variability in health-care services using amenable mortality as a performance indicator. Convergent validity was examined against other indicators, such as health expenditure, GDP per capita, life expectancy at birth, disability-free life expectancy at age 15, number of diagnostic and laboratory tests per 1,000 inhabitants, and the prevalence of cancer and cardiovascular diseases.

[Geographical and temporal trends in infant mortality in Italy and current limits of the routine data].

Objective: to compare trends in infant, neonatal and post-neonatal mortality in Italy from 1991 to 2005 both at the national level and among the three Italian large geographical macro-areas (North, Center, South-Islands).

Design: observational study based on routine data.

Setting And Participants: the analysis was performed on the cohort of newborns (up to the first age of life) in Italy from 1991 to 2005.