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Accidents and undetermined deaths: re-evaluation of nationwide samples from the Scandinavian countries
BACKGROUND: National mortality statistics should be comparable between countries that use the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases. Distinguishing between manners of death, especially suicides and accidents, is a challenge. Knowledge about accidents is important in pr...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2016
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4882827/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27229154 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-016-3135-5 |
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author | Tøllefsen, Ingvild Maria Thiblin, Ingemar Helweg-Larsen, Karin Hem, Erlend Kastrup, Marianne Nyberg, Ullakarin Rogde, Sidsel Zahl, Per-Henrik Østevold, Gunvor Ekeberg, Øivind |
author_facet | Tøllefsen, Ingvild Maria Thiblin, Ingemar Helweg-Larsen, Karin Hem, Erlend Kastrup, Marianne Nyberg, Ullakarin Rogde, Sidsel Zahl, Per-Henrik Østevold, Gunvor Ekeberg, Øivind |
author_sort | Tøllefsen, Ingvild Maria |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: National mortality statistics should be comparable between countries that use the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases. Distinguishing between manners of death, especially suicides and accidents, is a challenge. Knowledge about accidents is important in prevention of both accidents and suicides. The aim of the present study was to assess the reliability of classifying deaths as accidents and undetermined manner of deaths in the three Scandinavian countries and to compare cross-national differences. METHODS: The cause of death registers in Norway, Sweden and Denmark provided data from 2008 for samples of 600 deaths from each country, of which 200 were registered as suicides, 200 as accidents or undetermined manner of deaths and 200 as natural deaths. The information given to the eight experts was identical to the information used by the Cause of Death Register. This included death certificates, and if available external post-mortem examinations, forensic autopsy reports and police reports. RESULTS: In total, 69 % (Sweden and Norway) and 78 % (Denmark) of deaths registered in the official mortality statistics as accidents were confirmed by the experts. In the majority of the cases where disagreement was seen, the experts reclassified accidents to undetermined manner of death, in 26, 25 and 19 % of cases, respectively. Few cases were reclassified as suicides or natural deaths. Among the extracted accidents, the experts agreed least with the official mortality statistics concerning drowning and poisoning accidents. They also reported most uncertainty in these categories of accidents. In a second re-evaluation, where more information was made available, the Norwegian psychiatrist and forensic pathologist increased their agreement with the official mortality statistics from 76 to 87 %, and from 85 to 88 %, respectively, regarding the Norwegian and Swedish datasets. Among the extracted undetermined deaths in the Swedish dataset, the two experts reclassified 22 and 51 %, respectively, to accidents. CONCLUSION: There was moderate agreement in reclassification of accidents between the official mortality statistics and the experts. In the majority of cases where there was disagreement, accidents were reclassified as undetermined manner of death, and only a small proportion as suicides. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4882827 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2016 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-48828272016-05-28 Accidents and undetermined deaths: re-evaluation of nationwide samples from the Scandinavian countries Tøllefsen, Ingvild Maria Thiblin, Ingemar Helweg-Larsen, Karin Hem, Erlend Kastrup, Marianne Nyberg, Ullakarin Rogde, Sidsel Zahl, Per-Henrik Østevold, Gunvor Ekeberg, Øivind BMC Public Health Research Article BACKGROUND: National mortality statistics should be comparable between countries that use the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases. Distinguishing between manners of death, especially suicides and accidents, is a challenge. Knowledge about accidents is important in prevention of both accidents and suicides. The aim of the present study was to assess the reliability of classifying deaths as accidents and undetermined manner of deaths in the three Scandinavian countries and to compare cross-national differences. METHODS: The cause of death registers in Norway, Sweden and Denmark provided data from 2008 for samples of 600 deaths from each country, of which 200 were registered as suicides, 200 as accidents or undetermined manner of deaths and 200 as natural deaths. The information given to the eight experts was identical to the information used by the Cause of Death Register. This included death certificates, and if available external post-mortem examinations, forensic autopsy reports and police reports. RESULTS: In total, 69 % (Sweden and Norway) and 78 % (Denmark) of deaths registered in the official mortality statistics as accidents were confirmed by the experts. In the majority of the cases where disagreement was seen, the experts reclassified accidents to undetermined manner of death, in 26, 25 and 19 % of cases, respectively. Few cases were reclassified as suicides or natural deaths. Among the extracted accidents, the experts agreed least with the official mortality statistics concerning drowning and poisoning accidents. They also reported most uncertainty in these categories of accidents. In a second re-evaluation, where more information was made available, the Norwegian psychiatrist and forensic pathologist increased their agreement with the official mortality statistics from 76 to 87 %, and from 85 to 88 %, respectively, regarding the Norwegian and Swedish datasets. Among the extracted undetermined deaths in the Swedish dataset, the two experts reclassified 22 and 51 %, respectively, to accidents. CONCLUSION: There was moderate agreement in reclassification of accidents between the official mortality statistics and the experts. In the majority of cases where there was disagreement, accidents were reclassified as undetermined manner of death, and only a small proportion as suicides. BioMed Central 2016-05-27 /pmc/articles/PMC4882827/ /pubmed/27229154 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-016-3135-5 Text en © Tøllefsen et al. 2016 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Tøllefsen, Ingvild Maria Thiblin, Ingemar Helweg-Larsen, Karin Hem, Erlend Kastrup, Marianne Nyberg, Ullakarin Rogde, Sidsel Zahl, Per-Henrik Østevold, Gunvor Ekeberg, Øivind Accidents and undetermined deaths: re-evaluation of nationwide samples from the Scandinavian countries |
title | Accidents and undetermined deaths: re-evaluation of nationwide samples from the Scandinavian countries |
title_full | Accidents and undetermined deaths: re-evaluation of nationwide samples from the Scandinavian countries |
title_fullStr | Accidents and undetermined deaths: re-evaluation of nationwide samples from the Scandinavian countries |
title_full_unstemmed | Accidents and undetermined deaths: re-evaluation of nationwide samples from the Scandinavian countries |
title_short | Accidents and undetermined deaths: re-evaluation of nationwide samples from the Scandinavian countries |
title_sort | accidents and undetermined deaths: re-evaluation of nationwide samples from the scandinavian countries |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4882827/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27229154 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-016-3135-5 |
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