%0 Journal Article
%T Verbal autopsy of 80,000 adult deaths in Tamilnadu, South India
%A Vendhan Gajalakshmi
%A Richard Peto
%J BMC Public Health
%D 2004
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/1471-2458-4-47
%X A ten day training on writing verbal autopsy (VA) report for adult deaths was given to non-medical graduates with at least 15 years of formal education. They interviewed surviving spouse/close associates of the deceased to write a verbal autopsy report in local language (Tamil) on the complaints, symptoms, signs, duration and treatment details of illness prior to death. Each report was reviewed centrally by two physicians independently. Random re-interviewing of 5% of the VA reports was done to check the reliability and reproducibility of the VA report. The validity of VA diagnosis was assessed only for cancer deaths.Verbal autopsy reduced the proportion of deaths attributed to unspecified and unknown causes from 54% to 23% (p < 0.0001) in urban and from 41% to 26% (p < 0.0001) in rural areas in Tamilnadu for adult deaths (¡Ý 25). The sensitivity of VA to identify cancer was 95% in the age group 25¨C69.A ten day training programme to write verbal autopsy report with adequate feed back sessions and random sampling of 5% of the verbal autopsy reports for re-interview worked very well in Tamilnadu, to arrive at the probable underlying cause of death reliably for deaths in early adult life or middle age (25¨C69 years) and less reliably for older ages (70+). Thus VA is practicable for deaths in early adult life or middle age and is of more limited value in old age.In developed countries, data on disease-specific mortality by age are readily available from national vital registration. In developing countries, where 80% of the world's deaths occur, estimation of cause of death is more difficult because the levels of coverage of vital registration and reliability of cause of death stated on the death certificate are generally low (especially in rural areas).A reliable assessment of disease-specific mortality rates is not yet possible in many parts of India, either because the underlying cause of the terminal illness was never known or because the relevant information was not r
%U http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/4/47