Deaths from heart failure: using coarsened exact matching to correct cause-of-death statistics.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Incomplete information on death certificates makes recorded cause-of-death data less useful for public health monitoring and planning. Certifying physicians sometimes list only the mode of death without indicating the underlying disease or diseases that led to the death. Inconsistent cause-of-death assignment among cardiovascular causes of death is of particular concern. This can prevent valid epidemiologic comparisons across countries and over time.

Methods

We propose that coarsened exact matching be used to infer the underlying causes of death where only the mode of death is known. We focus on the case of heart failure in US, Mexican, and Brazilian death records.

Results

Redistribution algorithms derived using this method assign the largest proportion of

SUBMITTER: Stevens GA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2873307 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature