Page W F, Braun M M, Caporaso N E
Medical Follow-up Agency, Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC 20418, USA.
Mil Med. 1995 Jul;160(7):351-5.
Veterans now make up nearly two-thirds of U.S. males aged 65 and older, and thus medical research in the male geriatric population is largely concerned with veterans, whose mortality experience assumes greater importance as they age. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) records provide an effective and efficient means of gathering information on mortality of veterans, but are useful only if they provide relatively complete ascertainment. We investigated the completeness of VA death reporting (via the Beneficiary Identification and Records Locator Subsystem [BIRLS]) in a large cohort of nearly 32,000 World War II veteran twins followed from 1946 through 1990, comparing VA and Social Security Administration (SSA) mortality ascertainment. The small number of additional deaths found using SSA records--roughly 3% of total deaths--provides evidence that VA death reporting was nearly complete. A further capture-recapture analysis, assuming independence of BIRLS and SSA mortality ascertainment, indicated that BIRLS ascertainment was 95.4% complete.
退伍军人如今占美国65岁及以上男性的近三分之二，因此老年男性人群的医学研究很大程度上关注退伍军人，随着他们年龄增长，其死亡情况变得愈发重要。美国退伍军人事务部（VA）的记录提供了一种有效且高效的收集退伍军人死亡信息的方式，但只有在提供相对完整的确定信息时才有用。我们调查了在一个近32,000名二战退伍军人双胞胎的大型队列中VA死亡报告（通过受益人识别和记录定位子系统[BIRLS]）的完整性，该队列从1946年跟踪至1990年，比较了VA和社会保障管理局（SSA）的死亡确定情况。使用SSA记录发现的少量额外死亡人数——约占总死亡人数的3%——证明VA死亡报告几乎是完整的。进一步的捕获 - 再捕获分析，假设BIRLS和SSA死亡确定相互独立，表明BIRLS确定的完整性为95.4%。
