Objective:

to assess the agreement and describe the causes and preventability of infant deaths before and after the investigation.

Methods:

investigation files and death certificates of infants under one year, of mothers living in Recife, Brazil, in 2014 were used; the Cohen kappa index was adopted for agreement analysis of the underlying causes of death; the list of preventable causes of deaths by interventions of the Brazilian National Health System was also adopted.

Results:

183 infant deaths were analyzed, of which 117 (63.9%) had the underlying cause revised; before the investigation, 170 (92.2%) deaths were considered preventable, and after investigation, 178 (97.3%); there was reasonable agreement (0.338) regarding the underlying causes of death, and moderate (0.439) for preventability.

Conclusion:

infant mortality surveillance enabled the improvement of vital events information, contributing to the progress in the specification of underlying causes of death and in the preventability of infant death.

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