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Verbal Autopsy as a Tool for Defining Causes of Death in Specific Healthcare Contexts: Study of Applicability through a Traditional Literature Review

Autopsy examination, the gold standard for defining causes of death, is often difficult to apply in certain health care settings, especially in developing countries. The COVID-19 pandemic and its associated difficulties in terms of implementing autopsy examinations have made the need for alternative...

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Autores principales: Bailo, Paolo, Gibelli, Filippo, Ricci, Giovanna, Sirignano, Ascanio
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9517079/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36142022
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph191811749
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author Bailo, Paolo
Gibelli, Filippo
Ricci, Giovanna
Sirignano, Ascanio
author_facet Bailo, Paolo
Gibelli, Filippo
Ricci, Giovanna
Sirignano, Ascanio
author_sort Bailo, Paolo
collection PubMed
description Autopsy examination, the gold standard for defining causes of death, is often difficult to apply in certain health care settings, especially in developing countries. The COVID-19 pandemic and its associated difficulties in terms of implementing autopsy examinations have made the need for alternative means of determining causes of death even more evident. One of the most interesting alternatives to the conventional autopsy is the verbal autopsy, a tool that originated in Africa and Asia in the 1950s and consists of a structured interview with the deceased’s family members concerning the symptoms manifested by the person and the circumstances of death. In the early 1990s, the first doubts emerged about the validity of verbal autopsies, especially about the real reliability of the cause of death identified through this tool. The objective of the review was to identify studies that had assayed the validity of verbal autopsies through a rigorous comparison of the results that emerged from it with the results of conventional autopsies. When starting from an initial pool of 256 articles, only 2 articles were selected for final review. These are the only two original research articles in which a verbal autopsy validation process was performed by employing the full diagnostic autopsy as the gold standard. The two papers reached opposite conclusions, one suggesting adequate validity of verbal autopsy in defining the cause of death and the other casting serious doubts on the real applicability of this tool. Verbal autopsy undoubtedly has extraordinary potential, especially in the area of health and demographic surveillance, even considering the implementation that could result from the use of artificial intelligence and deep learning. However, at present, there appears to be a lack of solid data to support the robust reliability of this tool in defining causes of death.
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spelling pubmed-95170792022-09-29 Verbal Autopsy as a Tool for Defining Causes of Death in Specific Healthcare Contexts: Study of Applicability through a Traditional Literature Review Bailo, Paolo Gibelli, Filippo Ricci, Giovanna Sirignano, Ascanio Int J Environ Res Public Health Review Autopsy examination, the gold standard for defining causes of death, is often difficult to apply in certain health care settings, especially in developing countries. The COVID-19 pandemic and its associated difficulties in terms of implementing autopsy examinations have made the need for alternative means of determining causes of death even more evident. One of the most interesting alternatives to the conventional autopsy is the verbal autopsy, a tool that originated in Africa and Asia in the 1950s and consists of a structured interview with the deceased’s family members concerning the symptoms manifested by the person and the circumstances of death. In the early 1990s, the first doubts emerged about the validity of verbal autopsies, especially about the real reliability of the cause of death identified through this tool. The objective of the review was to identify studies that had assayed the validity of verbal autopsies through a rigorous comparison of the results that emerged from it with the results of conventional autopsies. When starting from an initial pool of 256 articles, only 2 articles were selected for final review. These are the only two original research articles in which a verbal autopsy validation process was performed by employing the full diagnostic autopsy as the gold standard. The two papers reached opposite conclusions, one suggesting adequate validity of verbal autopsy in defining the cause of death and the other casting serious doubts on the real applicability of this tool. Verbal autopsy undoubtedly has extraordinary potential, especially in the area of health and demographic surveillance, even considering the implementation that could result from the use of artificial intelligence and deep learning. However, at present, there appears to be a lack of solid data to support the robust reliability of this tool in defining causes of death. MDPI 2022-09-17 /pmc/articles/PMC9517079/ /pubmed/36142022 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph191811749 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Review
Bailo, Paolo
Gibelli, Filippo
Ricci, Giovanna
Sirignano, Ascanio
Verbal Autopsy as a Tool for Defining Causes of Death in Specific Healthcare Contexts: Study of Applicability through a Traditional Literature Review
title Verbal Autopsy as a Tool for Defining Causes of Death in Specific Healthcare Contexts: Study of Applicability through a Traditional Literature Review
title_full Verbal Autopsy as a Tool for Defining Causes of Death in Specific Healthcare Contexts: Study of Applicability through a Traditional Literature Review
title_fullStr Verbal Autopsy as a Tool for Defining Causes of Death in Specific Healthcare Contexts: Study of Applicability through a Traditional Literature Review
title_full_unstemmed Verbal Autopsy as a Tool for Defining Causes of Death in Specific Healthcare Contexts: Study of Applicability through a Traditional Literature Review
title_short Verbal Autopsy as a Tool for Defining Causes of Death in Specific Healthcare Contexts: Study of Applicability through a Traditional Literature Review
title_sort verbal autopsy as a tool for defining causes of death in specific healthcare contexts: study of applicability through a traditional literature review
topic Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9517079/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36142022
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph191811749
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