Validation studies of verbal autopsy methods: a systematic review

BMC Public Health

Research

Buddhika P. K. Mahesh¹  Hafizur Rahman Chowdhury¹  Ajay Acharya¹  John D. Hart¹  Tim Adair¹  Riley H. Hazard¹  Rohina Joshi² 

[1] Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne, Carlton, Victoria, Australia;The George Institute for Global Health, New Delhi, India;School of Population Health, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia;

关键词: Verbal autopsy;    Verbal autopsy mode;    Validation;    Cause of death;    Civil registration and vital statistics;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12889-022-14628-1

 received in 2021-06-29, accepted in 2022-11-14,  发布年份 2022

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundVerbal autopsy (VA) has emerged as an increasingly popular technique to assign cause of death in parts of the world where the majority of deaths occur without proper medical certification. The purpose of this study was to examine the key characteristics of studies that have attempted to validate VA cause of death against an established cause of death.MethodsA systematic review was conducted by searching the MEDLINE, EMBASE, Cochrane-library, and Scopus electronic databases. Included studies contained 1) a VA component, 2) a validation component, and 3) original analysis or re-analysis. Characteristics of VA studies were extracted. A total of 527 studies were assessed, and 481 studies screened to give 66 studies selected for data extraction.ResultsSixty-six studies were included from multiple countries. Ten studies used an existing database. Sixteen studies used the World Health Organization VA questionnaire and 5 studies used the Population Health Metrics Research Consortium VA questionnaire. Physician certification was used in 36 studies and computer coded methods were used in 14 studies. Thirty-seven studies used high level comparator data with detailed laboratory investigations.ConclusionMost studies found VA to be an effective cause of death assignment method and compared VA cause of death to a high-quality established cause of death. Nonetheless, there were inconsistencies in the methodologies of the validation studies, and many used poor quality comparison cause of death data. Future VA validation studies should adhere to consistent methodological criteria so that policymakers can easily interpret the findings to select the most appropriate VA method.Prospero RegistrationCRD42020186886.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© The Author(s) 2022

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Fig. 1

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