International journal of epidemiology
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Multicenter Study
Diagnostic accuracy of physician review, expert algorithms and data-derived algorithms in adult verbal autopsies.
The verbal autopsy (VA) is used to collect information on cause-specific mortality from bereaved relatives. A cause of death may be assigned by physician review of the questionnaires, or by an algorithm. We compared the diagnostic accuracy of physician review, an expert algorithm, and data-derived algorithms. ⋯ For those settings where physician review is not feasible, expert and data-derived algorithms provide an alternative approach for assigning many causes of death. We recommend that the algorithms proposed herein are validated further.