The Autopsy, Medicine, and Mortality Statistics

Series 3, No. 32. The Autopsy, Medicine, and Mortality Statistics. 52 pp. (PHS) 2001-1416. GPO stock number and price forthcoming.
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The Autopsy Committee of the College of American Pathologists undertook the "Autopsy and Medicine" series in 1997 with two major goals in mind:

To illustrate the continued value of the autopsy to the practice of medicine; and

To provide educational material and discussion concerning cause-of-death statements and completion of the death certificate.

The series of articles published in a new report titled "The Autopsy, Medicine, and Mortality Statistics," document the value of autopsy in health care and health statistics and provides educational information about complete cause-of-death statements. Autopsy information has long been an essential tool for quality control of medical care and for enhancing the quality of cause-of-death information reported on the death certificate.

Death certificate information is a major source of statistical data to identify public health problems, to monitor progress in public health, to allocate research funds, and to conduct scientific research. For these reasons, good reporting of causes of death is very important. The articles illustrate many of the basic principles in cause-of-death reports: intellectual process of determining the based medical opinion of causes of death, separation of contributing causes in Part 2 of the medical certification from the sequence of conditions reported in Part 1, report of a single condition per line, avoidance of abbreviations, and amendment of the record if additional information becomes available later. This report provides additional examples of cause-of-death statements to supplement those available from State and Federal vital statistics programs.

Key Words: death certificate, autopsy, mortality, cause of death

This page last reviewed October 15, 2008