In a recent issue of CHEST (January 2006),1 the Salmeterol Multicenter Asthma Research Trial (or SMART) demonstrated that the regular use of a twice-daily regimen of salmeterol in asthmatic patients was associated with an unnerving increase in respiratory-related and asthma-related deaths, combined asthmarelated deaths, or life-threatening experiences. However, surely one of the other most conc...

Background: Verbal Autopsy Questionnaire (VA) is an important tool to estimate the cause of death among those populations lacking an appropriate death registration system. In this study, the validity and reliability of verbal autopsy were assessed.    Methods: The Persian version of the questionnaire was prepared using the translation and back- translation method. In the first and se...

A study was carried out on the cause of death of 100 lower limb amputees who had been admitted to the Dundee Limb Fitting Centre, Tayside, Scotland for prosthetic management or wheelchair training. A comprehensive database has been established in the Centre for 25 years and the database is updated regularly. The date of death was collected and recorded. One hundred sequential deaths were invest...

Perspectives M ore than half of the world's deaths pass by undocumented as to cause [1]. Whilst the appropriate focus of health services may well be the care of the living, consistent and reliable cause-of-death data also constitute a crucial and major resource for health planning and prioritisation, and their lack in many settings is a major concern. Two new papers from Christopher Murray and ...

Medical Certificate of Cause of Death, commonly called Death Certificate, is the most frequently issued certificate, at least by a government employed medical officer, if not by a private practitioner. It is common knowledge that many medical officers, even some of those with incomparable medical knowledge and expertise, do not fill up this document of immense medical and legal importance corre...

Sudden cardiac deaths due to giant cell myocarditis (GCM) are uncommon. Giant cell myocarditis is an inflammatory myocardial disease. It is characterized by inflammation of the heart muscle (myocardium), a condition referred to as myocarditis. Inflammation is caused by widespread infiltration of giant cells associated with other inflammatory cells and cardiac muscles cell destruction. Giant cel...

Background: Avoidable mortality (AM) is one of the most important health indicators (HI) and represents the quality of care in a hospital.Objective: This study measured the efficacy of a training program for a hospital healthcare staff to reduce AM.Methods: This epidemiological study on community intervention analyzed time-series da...

BACKGROUND Sudden cardiac death (SCD) is a leading cause of death in the United States, but the relative public health burden is unknown. We estimated the burden of premature death from SCD and compared it with other diseases. METHODS AND RESULTS Analyses were based on the following data sources (using most recent sources that provided appropriately stratified data): (1) leading causes of dea...