@article{ref1,
title="Quality of cause-of-death reporting using ICD-10 drowning codes: a descriptive study of 69 countries",
journal="BMC medical research methodology",
year="2010",
author="Lu, Tsung-Hsueh and Lunetta, P. and Walker, S.",
volume="10",
number="1",
pages="30-30",
abstract="BACKGROUND: The systematic collection of high-quality mortality data is a prerequisite in designing relevant drowning prevention programmes. This descriptive study aimed to assess the quality (i.e., level of specificity) of cause-of-death reporting using ICD-10 drowning codes across 69 countries. METHODS: World Health Organization (WHO) mortality data were extracted for analysis. The proportion of unintentional drowning deaths coded as unspecified at the 3-character level (ICD-10 code W74) and for which the place of occurrence was unspecified at the 4th character (.9) were calculated for each country as indicators of the quality of cause-of-death reporting. RESULTS: In 32 of the 69 countries studied, the percentage of cases of unintentional drowning coded as unspecified at the 3-character level exceeded 50%, and in 19 countries, this percentage exceeded 80%; in contrast, the percentage was lower than 10% in only 10 countries. In 21 of the 56 countries that report 4-character codes, the percentage of unintentional drowning deaths for which the place of occurrence was unspecified at the 4th character exceeded 50%, and in 15 countries, exceeded 90%; in only 14 countries was this percentage lower than 10%. CONCLUSION: Despite the introduction of more specific subcategories for drowning in the ICD-10, many countries were found to be failing to report sufficiently specific codes in drowning mortality data submitted to the WHO.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="1471-2288",
doi="10.1186/1471-2288-10-30",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2288-10-30"
}