Winbo I G, Serenius F H, Dahlquist G G, Källen B A
Department of Paediatrics, Umeå University Hospital, Sweden.
Int J Epidemiol. 1997 Dec;26(6):1298-306. doi: 10.1093/ije/26.6.1298.
In large-scale epidemiological studies of stillbirths and neonatal deaths a method is needed to replace detailed medical record audits in order to determine the cause of death.
A computer-based method is presented for determination of the cause of death in stillbirths and in neonatal deaths. It utilizes information in the Swedish medical registries. The study comprises 6044 dead infants born in Sweden from 1983-1990. For each infant the program determines 31 basic characteristics which are important in deciding the cause of death. Based on these characteristics a modified Wigglesworth's classification is used to find the cause of death. The validity of the method was checked by comparing the computer generated information with information obtained by scrutinizing medical records for a 10% representative sample (603 infants).
Specificity and sensitivity for each basic characteristic varied, but for the modified Wigglesworth cause of death classification the concordance was 88%. The weakest data refer to intrauterine deaths, where pertinent information was often missing in the medical registries.
The method can be used for large-scale epidemiological studies.
在死产和新生儿死亡的大规模流行病学研究中，需要一种方法来取代详细的病历审核以确定死因。
提出了一种基于计算机的方法来确定死产和新生儿死亡的死因。它利用瑞典医学登记处的信息。该研究包括1983年至1990年在瑞典出生的6044名死亡婴儿。对于每个婴儿，该程序确定31个在决定死因方面很重要的基本特征。基于这些特征，使用改良的威格尔斯沃思分类法来找出死因。通过将计算机生成的信息与通过详细审查10%代表性样本（603名婴儿）的病历获得的信息进行比较，检验了该方法的有效性。
每个基本特征的特异性和敏感性各不相同，但对于改良的威格尔斯沃思死因分类，一致性为88%。最薄弱的数据涉及宫内死亡，医学登记处中往往缺少相关信息。
该方法可用于大规模流行病学研究。
