Fatal Infectious Disease Surveillance in a Medical Examiner Database1

Details

• Alternative Title:
  Emerg Infect Dis
• Personal Author:
  Wolfe, Mitchell I. ; Nolte, Kurt B. ; Yoon, Steven S.
• Description:
  Increasing infectious disease deaths, the emergence of new infections, and bioterrorism have made surveillance for infectious diseases a public health concern. Medical examiners and coroners certify approximately 20% of all deaths that occur within the United States and can be a key source of information regarding infectious disease deaths. We hypothesized that a computer-assisted search tool (algorithm) could detect infectious disease deaths from a medical examiner database, thereby reducing the time and resources required to perform such surveillance manually. We developed two algorithms, applied them to a medical examiner database, and verified the cases identified against the opinion of a panel of experts. The algorithms detected deaths with infectious components with sensitivities from 67% to 94%, and predictive value positives ranging from 8% to 49%. Algorithms can be useful for surveillance in medical examiner offices that have limited resources or for conducting surveillance across medical examiner jurisdictions.
• Subjects:
  Algorithms Communicable Diseases Communicable Diseases, Emerging Coroners And Medical Examiners Databases, Factual Humans Population Surveillance Research Sensitivity And Specificity
• Source:
  Emerg Infect Dis. 10(1):48-53.
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Place as Subject:
  New Mexico
• Location:
  North America
• Volume:
  10
• Issue:
  1
• Collection(s):
  Emerging Infectious Diseases
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:791e1c322b23ff8b3cdfd6fdb5a8c2e689a47188ccffb8d6afc8a4f043361d35
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/7709/cdc_7709_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 162.88 KB ]