Stroke is a leadingreason for hospitalization in the Brazilian Health System. Computerized tomographyhas been indicated as the main diagnostic method to define stroke treatment.The aim of this paper was to evaluate the utilization of computerized tomographyin hospitalizations due to stroke. The source of data was the Brazilian hospitalinformation system. The study population comprised adult stroke inpatients inBrazil in the Brazilian Health System, between April 2006 and December 2007.Data analysis was descriptive for stroke and for each separate subgroup. Ofthe 328,087 stroke inpatients, 73.5% had not done a computerized tomographyscan. Among hospitalizations that underwent a computed tomography scan, 22.3%had access to one test, and only 4.2% had two tests. Besides underuse, the computedtomography scans performed did not improve the encoding of the disease subgroup.
