Validity of mortality statistics

Information on death certificates: cause for concern?

“…That death certificates have shortcomings is also not in dispute; indeed, there have been a number of publications in recent years cataloguing the various aspects of death certification that have appeared, to various authors, to be unsatisfactory: errors in clinical diagnosis when compared with necropsy diag-noses5; lack of understanding of the principles underlying certification6; failure to read instructions given in the "notes to medical practitioners"7; error or confusion within pathological sequences6 8; and failure to include relevant diagnoses or therapeutic intervention.9 Such 12 However, absence of detail is a fault, which, if not remedied by the provision of such detail at a later date, cannot be otherwise rectified. This is clearly recognised and explains, first, the exhortations to doctors by the WHO and the OPCS to include all relevant information and, second, the facility whereby the OPCS may write to the certifying doctor, or the consultant under whose care the patient died, to ask for further information.…”