Abstract

RODRIGUEZ MARTIN, Odalys; MATOS VALDIVIA, Yanara; ANCHIA ALONSO, Danoris  and  BETANCOURT VALLADARES, Miriela. Main difficulties found in filling the death certificates out. Rev Cubana Salud Pública [online]. 2012, vol.38, n.3, pp. 414-421. ISSN 0864-3466.

Introduction: one of the fundamental pillars of decision-making in the public health is the knowledge about the main causes of death in the population. The death certificate is the official form and the primary registry of the statistical information system of mortality nationwide. Objective: to evaluate the filling out of the death certificates based on the detected errors. Methods: a retrospective longitudinal and descriptive study was performed in Ciego de Avila province in 2010. The universe was 3 334 death certificates, but the sample was finally made up of 324 selected by means of simple random sampling, since the certificates were consecutively numbered in the database. An expert criteria-validated qualitative scale was designed to evaluate the right filling out of the certificate. Results: the most frequent errors were leaving details or characteristics of a disease(for example, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) out in 22 certificates, do not specify the cause leading to bronchial pneumonia in the elderly in 19 of them, failing to mention the length of time elapsed from the onset of disease to the patient's death in 17, omission of the basic cause leading to death in 12 certificates, and stating basic unknown cause or sudden death in 6, among others. Conclusions: filling medical certificates out has improved, but there are still errors hindering the quality of statistical information on mortality. No low quality death certificates are detected.

Keywords : International Classification of Diseases; mortality; death certificate; basic cause.e; sequence.

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