Quality of death certification in Colombia

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the quality of the certification of general death and cancer in Colombia. METHODS: Validity indicators were described for each province and the cities of Bogotá, Cali, Manizales, Pasto and Bucaramanga. A factorial analysis of principal components was carried out in order to identify non-obvious relationships. RESULTS: Were analyzed 984,159 deaths, among them there were 164,542 deaths due to cancer. 93.7% of the general mortality was well certified. The predominant errors were signs, symptoms and ill-defined conditions. 92.8% of cancer mortality was well certified. The predominant errors were due to poorly defined cancer sites. CONCLUSIONS: Certification of quality indicators in Colombia has improved. Given the good performance of the quality indicators for certificating general death and cancer, it is considered that this is a valid input for the estimation of cancer incidences.