Misclassification of coronary heart disease in mortality statistics. Evidence from the WHO-MONICA Ghent-Charleroi Study in Belgium

摘要

Conclusions-It is concluded from the results in this paper that a substantial part of all deaths caused by CHD in Belgium are labelled with incorrect ICD codes nad are therefore misclassified in the official mortality statistics for Belgium. This is partly caused by a "drainage" of cases towards less specific CHD related ICD categories. A considerable fraction, how- ever, seems to be absolutely misclassified. Study objective-To validate the Belgian Vital statistics for coronary heart disease (CHID) on the basis of an independent acute myocardial infarction (AMI) regis- ter, carried out as part of the WHO- MONICA project.