Judicialization of the access to medicines in Brazil

The health judicialization is the social and legal phenomenon of increased lawsuits requesting access to health based on the constitutional projection of this right. The objective of the study was to summarize the results of original articles about the demands profile in the search for medicines through judicial channels in Brazil.It’s anintegrative review about original articles in the databases Scientific Electronic Library and Virtual Health Library databases, using the combination of descriptors as a search strategy. From the selected articles, it was extracted socio-demographic data (age group, sex), medical-sanitary data (generic name and additional non-medical documents besides the medical prescription used in the request) and political-administrative data (origin of the medical prescription, the drug presence in the official lists and whether it was covered by each component of the Pharmaceutical Assistance blocks). Women aged 50 years old are the biggest claimants of lawsuits pleading the right to health. In the demand for medicines, there is a greater use of the commercial name rather than the generic denomination in the medical prescriptions. Most of the demanded medicines are not in the national, state and / or municipal official lists and among the standardized drugs requested by the courts, these ones are included in the basic and specialized component of Pharmaceutical Assistance. It was not possible to draw a profile for the public or private origin of the medical prescriptions. It is necessary to deepen the studies on drug demands systematizing information and building monitoring indicators that enable the elaboration of effective strategies to improve access to health.