Population Health Metrics Research Consortium gold standard verbal autopsy validation study: design, implementation, and development of analysis datasets

Murray, Lopez, Robert Black, Ahuja Ramesh, Ali Said, Baqui Abdullah, Dandona Lalit, Dantzer Emily, Das Vinita, Dhingra Usha, Dutta Arup, Fawzi Wafaie, Flaxman, Gómez Sara, Hernández Bernardo, Joshi Rohina, Kalter Henry, Kumar Aarti, Kumar Vishwajeet, Lozano Rafael, Lucero Marilla, Mehta Saurabh, Neal Bruce, Ohno Summer, Prasad Rajendra, Praveen Devarsetty, Premji Zul, Ramírez-Villalobos Dolores, Remolador Hazel, Riley Ian, Romero Minerva, Said Mwanaidi, Sanvictores Diozele, Sazawal Sunil, Tallo Veronica

Description

Verbal autopsy methods are critically important for evaluating the leading causes of death in populations without adequate vital registration systems. With a myriad of analytical and data collection approaches, it is essential to create a high quality validation dataset from different populations to evaluate comparative method performance and make recommendations for future verbal autopsy implementation. This study was undertaken to compile a set of strictly defined gold standard deaths for which verbal autopsies were collected to validate the accuracy of different methods of verbal autopsy cause of death assignment. Methods Data collection was implemented in six sites in four countries: Andhra Pradesh, India; Bohol, Philippines; Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; Mexico City, Mexico; Pemba Island, Tanzania; and Uttar Pradesh, India. The Population Health Metrics Research Consortium (PHMRC) developed stringent diagnostic criteria including laboratory, pathology, and medical imaging findings to identify gold standard deaths in health facilities as well as an enhanced verbal autopsy instrument based on World Health Organization (WHO) standards. A cause list was constructed based on the WHO Global Burden of Disease estimates of the leading causes of death, potential to identify unique signs and symptoms, and the likely existence of sufficient medical technology to ascertain gold standard cases. Blinded verbal autopsies were collected on all gold standard deaths. Results Over 12,000 verbal autopsies on deaths with gold standard diagnoses were collected (7,836 adults, 2,075 children, 1,629 neonates, and 1,002 .

Sujets

• VA
• Validation
• Philippines
• Tanzania
• India
• Mexico
• Gold standard
• Cause of Death

Informations

• Publié par: biomed
• Publié le: 01 janvier 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 37
• Langue: English

Extrait

Murrayet al.Population Health Metrics2011,9:27 http://www.pophealthmetrics.com/content/9/1/27

R E S E A R C HOpen Access Population Health Metrics Research Consortium gold standard verbal autopsy validation study: design, implementation, and development of analysis datasets 1* 23 4 53 Christopher JL Murray, Alan D Lopez , Robert Black , Ramesh Ahuja , Said Mohd Ali , Abdullah Baqui , 1,6 78 33 91 Lalit Dandona, Emily Dantzer , Vinita Das , Usha Dhingra , Arup Dutta , Wafaie Fawzi , Abraham D Flaxman , 10 1011 34 4 Sara Gómez, Bernardo Hernández, Rohina Joshi, Henry Kalter , Aarti Kumar , Vishwajeet Kumar , 1 1213 111 8 Rafael Lozano , Marilla Lucero, Saurabh Mehta, Bruce Neal, Summer Lockett Ohno , Rajendra Prasad , 14 1510 122 10 Devarsetty Praveen, Zul Premji, Dolores RamírezVillalobos, Hazel Remolador, Ian Riley , Minerva Romero, 15 123 12 Mwanaidi Said, Diozele Sanvictores, Sunil Sazawaland Veronica Tallo

Abstract Background:Verbal autopsy methods are critically important for evaluating the leading causes of death in populations without adequate vital registration systems. With a myriad of analytical and data collection approaches, it is essential to create a high quality validation dataset from different populations to evaluate comparative method performance and make recommendations for future verbal autopsy implementation. This study was undertaken to compile a set of strictly defined gold standard deaths for which verbal autopsies were collected to validate the accuracy of different methods of verbal autopsy cause of death assignment. Methods:Data collection was implemented in six sites in four countries: Andhra Pradesh, India; Bohol, Philippines; Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; Mexico City, Mexico; Pemba Island, Tanzania; and Uttar Pradesh, India. The Population Health Metrics Research Consortium (PHMRC) developed stringent diagnostic criteria including laboratory, pathology, and medical imaging findings to identify gold standard deaths in health facilities as well as an enhanced verbal autopsy instrument based on World Health Organization (WHO) standards. A cause list was constructed based on the WHO Global Burden of Disease estimates of the leading causes of death, potential to identify unique signs and symptoms, and the likely existence of sufficient medical technology to ascertain gold standard cases. Blinded verbal autopsies were collected on all gold standard deaths. Results:Over 12,000 verbal autopsies on deaths with gold standard diagnoses were collected (7,836 adults, 2,075 children, 1,629 neonates, and 1,002 stillbirths). Difficulties in finding sufficient cases to meet gold standard criteria as well as problems with misclassification for certain causes meant that the target list of causes for analysis was reduced to 34 for adults, 21 for children, and 10 for neonates, excluding stillbirths. To ensure strict independence for the validation of methods and assessment of comparative performance, 500 testtrain datasets were created from the universe of cases, covering a range of causespecific compositions. Conclusions:This unique, robust validation dataset will allow scholars to evaluate the performance of different verbal autopsy analytic methods as well as instrument design. This dataset can be used to inform the

* Correspondence: [e-mail] 1 Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, University of Washington, 2301 Fifth Ave, Suite 600, Seattle, WA 98121, USA Full list of author information is available at the end of the article

© 2011 Murray et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.