Simplified Symptom Pattern Method for verbal autopsy analysis: multisite validation study using clinical diagnostic gold standards.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Verbal autopsy can be a useful tool for generating cause of death data in data-sparse regions around the world. The Symptom Pattern (SP) Method is one promising approach to analyzing verbal autopsy data, but it has not been tested rigorously with gold standard diagnostic criteria. We propose a simplified version of SP and evaluate its performance using verbal autopsy data with accompanying true cause of death.

Methods

We investigated specific parameters in SP's Bayesian framework that allow for its optimal performance in both assigning individual cause of death and in determining cause-specific mortality fractions. We evaluated these outcomes of the method separately for adult, child, and neonatal verbal autopsies in 500 different population constructs of verbal a

SUBMITTER: Murray CJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3160923 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature