Evaluation of new alternatives to increase the accuracy of the determination of cause of death: a public health approach

• Grant number: 16/50192-1
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: September 01, 2016
• End date: August 31, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Health Sciences - Medicine - Pathological Anatomy and Clinical Pathology
• Agreement: University of Melbourne
• Mobility Program: SPRINT - Projetos de pesquisa - Mobilidade
• Principal Investigator: Paulo Hilário Nascimento Saldiva
• Grantee: Paulo Hilário Nascimento Saldiva
• Principal researcher abroad: Alan Donald Lopez
• Institution abroad: University of Melbourne, Australia
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Medicina (FM). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 13/21728-2 - The use of modern autopsy techniques to investigate human diseases (MODAU), AP.TEM

Abstract

Governments require reliable information on causes of death in order to more appropriately plan health services. This information is likely to be less available, and of poor quality, in populations where access to medical services is limited. Interim solutions will be required if governments are to be able to access policy-relevant data on cause of death patterns in rural and remote communities. But planners need to have confidence that this information is reliable. Recent advances in verbal autopsy methods have led to the development and application of computer algorithms that can diagnose the cause of death efficiently, cheaply and quickly, based on family interviews, but the diagnostic accuracy of these algorithms has not been adequately established. Similarly, there is great potential for less invasive autopsy methods ( Minimally Invasive Autopsy MIA) that could be applied more widely than full autopsy, but the reliability of these methods is unknown also, Sao Paulo offers a unique validation environment because of the availability of autopsy data as the “gold standard” for assessing diagnostic accuracy. The objective of this project is to evaluate the performance of the VA and MIA, considering the conventional autopsy as the gold standard, so that these procedures can be applied broadly in determining the causes of death. (AU)