Assessing quality of medical death certification: Concordance between gold standard diagnosis and underlying cause of death in selected Mexican hospitals.

ABSTRACT:

Background

In Mexico, the vital registration system relies on information collected from death certificates to generate official mortality figures. Although the death certificate has high coverage across the country, there is little information regarding its validity. The objective of this study was to assess the concordance between the underlying cause of death in official statistics obtained from death certificates and a gold standard diagnosis of the same deaths derived from medical records of hospitals.

Methods

The study sample consisted of 1,589 deaths that occurred in 34 public hospitals in the Federal District and the state of Morelos, Mexico in 2009. Neonatal, child, and adult cases were selected for causes of death that included infectious diseases, noncommunicable

SUBMITTER: Hernandez B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3160931 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature