BACKGROUND In the city of Chennai, India, registration of the fact of death is almost complete but the cause of death is often inadequately recorded on the death certificate. A special verbal autopsy (VA) study of 48 000 adult deaths in Chennai during 1995-97 was conducted to arrive at the probable underlying cause of death and to measure cause specific mortality rates for Chennai. METHODS Tr...

INTRODUCTION Asthma mortality rates are based on deaths for which asthma is coded as the underlying cause on the death certificate. We conducted an asthma mortality review to evaluate this surveillance measure for Minnesota residents who were aged 55 years or older METHODS We enlisted an expert panel to review transcribed interviews from the next-of-kin and case histories for decedents whose ...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate deaths attributed to multiple causes in which tuberculosis was one of the causes listed. METHODS All deaths among residents of the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, occurring between 1999 and 2001 and for which the death certificate mentioned tuberculosis, were investigated. The World Health Organization guidelines were used in characterizing the underlying and associated...

AIM To assess the value of maintaining a death register in a general practice with particular reference to monitoring quality of care. DESIGN OF STUDY Observational study. SETTING Inner London general practice. METHOD The practice maintained a manual death register, retained medical records of all deceased patients, and requested information on cause of death from health authorities and c...

OBJECTIVE To determine location, manner, and physician certifier of pediatric deaths. DESIGN A descriptive study of death certificate information for all child deaths (aged birth through 17 years) for the years 1995 and 1996. SETTING Urban county of more than 780,000 population. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Field of specialty of physician certifiers, location of death, and category of deaths cer...

Death rates after surgical care are increasingly analysed to estimate prognosis and for clinical audit and quality assessment. Expectations are growing among health professionals and the public that hospitals will know about, and learn from, the death rates of their patients. However, routine statistics commonly provide information only on deaths that occur during the hospital admission in whic...

Protective gear (for example, helmets and bulletproof vests) shields certain body regions from damaging energy. Failure to specify on death certificates the body region and nature of fatal injuries compromises the utility of mortality data for epidemiologic or prevention research. Of fatally injured California motorcyclists, 41% had no specific injuries listed on their death certificates in 198...