[Discrepancies between verbal information and the records in pregnant woman card, a neglected instrument].

PURPOSE To compare the filling out of the prenatal care card of pregnant women at a school-service and other services, as well as to verify the concordance between these records and verbal information provided by the puerperae. METHODS A two-stage epidemiological, cross-sectional study was performed with stratified sampling, proportional to number of births. In the first stage, the information recorded on the prenatal care card in the school-service was compared to that recorded in units not linked to higher health education in Recife (PE). In the second stage, the information about prenatal care was collected with a semi-structured questionnaire applied to women during the puerperal period. A total of 262 puerperae older than 19 years, who had a prenatal care card at the time of delivery were included in the study from May to July 2008. Data were analyzed statistically by the χ(2) test, Student's t-test or Mann-Whitney test, all one-sided to the right, with the level of significance set at 5%. RESULTS The information more often recorded on the prenatal care card in the school-service was: schooling (86.5 versus 70.3%; p=0.002), marital status, (83.7 versus 70.9%; p=0.01), weight prior to pregnancy (72.1 versus 46.8%; p<0.001), height (62.5 versus 45.6%; p=0.007), and educational practices (76.9 versus 11.4%; p<0.001) and, at other services, only birth weight <2,500 g (15.4 versus 27.2% at the school-service; p=0.02). There were significant discrepancies between data obtained by verbal information and the prenatal care records of the pregnant women. At the school-service, 40.3% of pregnant women received adequate prenatal care versus 20.3% at other units. CONCLUSIONS In all services, there was a predominance of recorded information directly related to delivery, while information about actions with preventive characteristics during prenatal care was neglected.