Validity of underlying cause of death statistics in Hermosillo, Mexico

Carvalho, Mary H Freire de; Álvarez-Hernández, Gerardo; Denman, Catalina A.; Harlow, Sioḃán D.

doi:10.1590/s0036-36342011000400005

Cited by 8 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…This would suggest a relatively large implied change in the cause specifi c mortality fraction (CSMF). This fi nding is in contrast to studies by Rao et al and Carvalho et al where they report minimal or no misclassifi cation of cerebrovascular diseases in their studies Carvalho et al 2011). The consequences of such misclassifi cation of leading causes of death could be substantial for public health programs since strategies and approaches to prevention are different for each disease category.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 71%

Assessing the Reliability of Causes of Death Reported by the Vital Registration System in Sri Lanka: Medical Records Review in Colombo

Rampatige¹,

Gamage

Peiris³

et al. 2013

HIM J

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Information on causes of death is critical for informed decision making in the health sector. This paper reports findings from a study that measured the accuracy of registered causes of death and quality of medical records for a sample of deaths occurring in hospitals in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Five physicians, trained in medical certification of cause of death, reconstructed death certificates for hospital deaths from medical records and assessed the quality of medical records for this purpose. The majority of medical records were found to be of average quality. Concordance between the underlying cause of death in the vital registration data and that from the 'gold standard' (medical records review) diagnosis was 41.4% (n=249). The sensitivity of all leading causes of death and positive predictive value were below 67%. Major misclassification errors were found in identifying deaths due to vascular diseases and diabetes mellitus. Certified causes of death in Sri Lanka are frequently incorrect, thus limiting their value for health policy and for monitoring progress towards development goals. Sri Lanka, and other countries at a similar level of statistical development, should consider periodically conducting research to evaluate the quality of cause of death reporting at both local and national levels.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 71%

Assessing the Reliability of Causes of Death Reported by the Vital Registration System in Sri Lanka: Medical Records Review in Colombo

Rampatige¹,

Gamage

Peiris³

et al. 2013

HIM J

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“…Surprisingly, in our selected studies, ill-defined causes of death were frequently reported even in hospital settings. The policy impact of allocating these non-specific codes to more definitive causes are reported in two studies; 21 , 44 key findings from a meta-analysis of misclassification patterns can be found in the article by Rampatige et al 47 …”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Systematic review of statistics on causes of deaths in hospitals: strengthening the evidence for policy-makers

Rampatige

Mikkelsen²,

Hernández

et al. 2014

Bull. World Health Organ.

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ObjectiveTo systematically review the reliability of hospital data on cause of death and encourage periodic reviews of these data using a standard method.MethodsWe searched Google Scholar, Pubmed and Biblioteca Virtual de la Salud for articles in English, Spanish and Portuguese that reported validation studies of data on cause of death. We analysed the results of 199 studies that had used medical record reviews to validate the cause of death reported on death certificates or by the vital registration system.FindingsThe screened studies had been published between 1983 and 2013 and their results had been reported in English (n = 124), Portuguese (n = 25) or Spanish (n = 50). Only 29 of the studies met our inclusion criteria. Of these, 13 had examined cause of death patterns at the population level – with a view to correcting cause-specific mortality fractions – while the other 16 had been undertaken to identify discrepancies in the diagnosis for specific diseases before and after medical record review. Most of the selected studies reported substantial misdiagnosis of causes of death in hospitals. There was wide variation in study methodologies. Many studies did not describe the methods used in sufficient detail to be able to assess the reproducibility or comparability of their results.ConclusionThe assumption that causes of death are being accurately reported in hospitals is unfounded. To improve the reliability and usefulness of reported causes of death, national governments should do periodic medical record reviews to validate the quality of their hospital cause of death data, using a standard.

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“…In Mexico, agreement between death certificates and medical records appears to be moderately high for neoplasia (85% agreement), but not for hypertensive diseases, diabetes, and infections. 6 The 25% difference in mortality estimates for CKD underscores the challenges of assigning causes of death and warrants a more detailed investigation of the potential source of this difference given the increasing importance of the burden of CKD in Mexico. 11,12 This finding also sheds light on the fact that although Mexico's official death registration has been rated with the highest quality based on completeness and coding characteristics, inaccuracy in data processing may be present for certain diseases.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We hypothesized that Mexico's low cancer mortality could be attributable to pitfalls in death certificate coding and attribution of underlying cause of death in national mortality registry used for mortality statistics. 6 We aim to explore death registration inaccuracy by comparing cancer mortality rates from Mexico's official death registry with a death registry from a disease surveillance system that independently processes death certificates.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%