Objectives: To determine the present completeness and acceptability of the cause of death statement on death certificates

Design: Content of registered death certificates

Setting: The province of Cavite

Samples: The death were randomly selected using two-stage sampling. First stage-random selection of 10 municipalities of Cavite from 23 municipalities. Second stage-random selection of 300 death certificates from each of the 10 municipalities. Sample size based on 95 percent confidence level

Main Outcome Measure: 1) Proportion of percentages of death certificates which were complete and acceptable to cause of death statement of 95 percent CI. 2) Chi-square test of association between completeness and a type of physician, certifying the cause of death (COD), b) place of death, and c) performance of autopsy. 3) Chi-square test of association between overall acceptability of the COD and the same 3 variables (type of physician ...)

Results: 1) Only 590 of the 3,000 death certificates(19.7 percent at (CI of 95 percent=13-26) have complete cause of death statements, 2) Of the 590 with complete COD, 12.5 percent(95 percent CI=8-16) were filled up in an acceptable manner 3) Among the 3 items, underlying casue was the least filled up item (28 percent). 4) Type of physician certifying the COD, place death an performance of autopsy were found to be significantly associated with completeness (p=0.002 to p=0.012429). 5) Type of physicians certifying the COD and place of death were significantly with associated acceptability (p=0.16934)

Conclusions: Not all death certifiates contain the complete and acceptable casues of death. Completeness and acceptability of death certificates is significantly associated with type of physician, place of death. Whereas performance of autopsy is only associated with completeness.

Objectives
To determine the present completeness and acceptability of the cause of death statement on death certificates

The Filipino Family Physician, 2000 38 ( 3 ) pages 57-63