Resumen

BARREIRO RAMOS, Héctor; BARREIRO PENARANDA, Adriana; FERNANDEZ VIERA, Eugenio  y  MARRERO MARTIN, Ofelia. Lo esencial del nuevo certificado médico de defunción del adulto. Rev Cubana Med Gen Integr [online]. 2002, vol.18, n.4, pp. 281-283. ISSN 1561-3038.

More than 12 years ago, we published a paper on how to issue the adult's death certificate correctly, giving an answer this way to a guidline of the National Public Health Division. There have been other publications, but there are still deficiencies in this legal medical procedure, which justifies by itself a new approach. As it has appeared a new form with some elements that should be cleared and taken into consideration, we decided to make a review of this topic and to provide a new material to help mainly assistance physicians and 5th year medical students to fill out the new adult's death certificate adequately. Special emphasis is made on 3 fundamental aspects: the new of this death certificate, the distinction of death causes and its sequence, since other topics may be dealt with by referring to the bibliography annotated in the text.

Palabras clave : DEATH CERTIFICATES; CAUSE OF DEATH; MORTALITY; INTERNATIONAL CLASSIFICATION OF DISEASES.