Prevalencia, tratamiento y control de la hipertensión arterial en adultos mexicanos: resultados de la Ensanut 2022.

OBJETIVO: Describir la prevalencia de hipertensión arterial (HTA), las características del tratamiento y la proporción de adultos mexicanos que tiene tensión arterial (TA) controlada. Material y métodos. Se midió la TA a 8 647 adultos en la Encuesta Nacional de Salud y Nutrición 2022 (Ensanut 2022). Se consideró que un participante tenía HTA o TA controlada cuando cumplía los criterios de la American College of Cardiology y la American Heart Association (ACC/AHA) o la Eighth Joint National Committee (JNC-8). RESULTADOS: La prevalencia de HTA en adultos fue 47.8% (según criterio del ACC/AHA). De éstos, 65.5% desconocía su diagnóstico. En adultos con diagnóstico previo de HTA, 33.7% tuvo TA controlada. Según la clasificación JNC-8, 29.4% de los adultos tenía HTA y 43.9% ignoraba su diagnóstico. Conclusión. En la Ensanut 2022 la mitad de los adultos tenía HTA y de ellos, tres de cada cinco no habían sido diagnosticados. El sistema de salud debe mejorar sus mecanismos de detección de HTA porque el subdiagnóstico y el mal control de la TA ocasiona discapacidad, mala calidad de vida y mortalidad prematura.

A Systematic Review of Normative Data for Verbal Fluency Test in Different Languages.

Verbal fluency tests are easy and quick to use in neuropsychological assessments, so they have been counted among the most classical tools in this context. To date, several normative data for verbal fluency tests have been provided in different languages and countries. A systematic review was carried out with studies that provide normative data for verbal fluency tests. Studies were collected from Scopus, PubMed and Web of Science. 183 studies were retrieved from the database search, of which 73 finally met the inclusion criteria. An analysis of the risk of bias regarding samples selection/characterization and procedure/results reports is conducted for each article. Finally, a full description of the normative data characteristics, considering country and language, verbal fluency task characteristics (type of task) and sample characteristics (number of subjects, gender, age, education) is included. The current systematic review provides an overview and analysis of internationally published normative data that might help clinicians in their search for valid and useful norms on verbal fluency tasks, as well as updated information about qualitative aspects of the different options currently available.

How to deal with the suffering: Utility of an emotional containment strategy to collect data for verbal autopsies in Mexico.

Verbal autopsies are often used to establish cause of death but can be emotionally taxing on the interviewers. We conducted focus groups with interviewers (N = 15) who collected data for verbal autopsies in Mexico in order to explore the utility of an emotional containment strategy designed to boost self-confidence and resilience. The interviewers reflected on broader cultural perspectives on illness and death and described the strategy as helpful in developing strategies to manage emotionally stressful situations and develop their confidence in their work performance. This type of intervention may be useful for field personnel who perform verbal autopsy interviews.KEY MESSAGESIn low- and middle-income countries with less reliable statistics systems, a significant proportion of deaths is not certified by a professional doctor. This complicates the registration of causes of death, which is a crucial issue for health systems. In the absence of reliable vital statistics systems, verbal autopsies (VA) offer an alternative for establishing cause of death.In response to emotional crises leading to resignations among the interviewers while testing an instrument for collecting VA, we designed an emotional containment strategy (ECS). It was specifically crafted to boost the self-confidence and resilience of participants in addition to enhancing their capacity for emotional recovery and to regain a functional state. In order to explore ECS results we conducted a qualitative cross-sectional study with four focus groups of interviewers who collected VA.The results obtained were positive, the interviewers were able to perform their work better by overcoming the emotional crisis that occurred both in them and in the people they interviewed.We recommend developing this type of intervention with all field staff performing verbal autopsy interviews, not only as a resource for emotional health, but also as a means of achieving better-quality data collection.

Efficacy of emotion-focused therapy in the treatment of eating disorders: A systematic review.

BACKGROUND: The high incidence of eating disorders (EDs) means that its treatment is approached from various perspectives, among which we find emotion-focused therapy (EFT). Therefore, the main objective of this systematic review was to know the effectiveness of EFT for eating disorders. METHOD: A systematic review of PubMed, the Cochrane Library and the Psychology and Behavioural Sciences Collection was carried out without a time limit and in a population with an eating disorder diagnosis. RESULTS: Eight studies fulfilled the eligibility criteria: (1) six studies treated the population with binge eating disorder (BED) five were group treatments, and four included the combined modality; (2) one with BED, bulimia nervosa (BN) and Eating Disorder No Otherwise Specified (EDNOS); and (3) one for a single case of anorexia nervosa (AN). The duration of treatments ranged from 12 weeks to 18 months, and all studies used the original EFT protocol. Specific variables of each type of eating disorder were studied, as well as comorbid symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: It seems that the results coincide in the existence of post-treatment improvements both in eating psychopathology and in affective symptoms, although with variable data during follow-up. More research is needed to affirm the efficacy of EFT as an empirically validated treatment for EDs.

Post-traumatic Stress Disorder after Severe Traumatic Brain Injury: A Systematic Review.

OBJECTIVE: The review aimed to summarize the existing knowledge base regarding post-traumatic stress disorder after severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) and try to guide future research. METHOD: Web of Science, Scopus, and PubMed databases were used to identify original studies that explored the relationship between severe TBI and post-traumatic stress disorder. RESULTS: A total of 13 studies were included in the review. They have been examined in terms of potentially compatible and incompatible mechanisms, as well as of possible confounding factors in relation to the diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder after severe TBI. CONCLUSION: Only a few studies in the literature have addressed the present topic; therefore, the prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder in patients with severe TBI still needs to be further investigated. In particular, future studies should be conducted only in severe TBI populations, considering their premorbid personality characteristics and their reactivity alteration. They should also obtain an accurate and appropriate assessment of post-traumatic stress disorder with clinical interviews as well as clarifying the role of post-traumatic amnesia in this population by incorporating control groups of patients.

Epidemiología de la hipertensión arterial en adultos mexicanos: diagnóstico, control y tendencias. Ensanut 2020 / Epidemiology of hypertension in Mexican adults: diagnosis, control and trends. Ensanut 2020

Resumen: Objetivo: Describir la prevalencia de hipertensión arterial (HTA) en adultos mexicanos, la proporción que tiene tensión arterial (TA) controlada y la tendencia en el periodo 2018-2020. Material y métodos: Se midió la TA a 9 844 adultos en la Encuesta Nacional de Salud y Nutrición (Ensanut) 2020. Se consideró que tenían HTA o TA controlada cuando cumplían los criterios del Seventh Joint National Committee (JNC-7) o American Heart Association (AHA). Resultados: La prevalencia de HTA fue 49.4% (según AHA), de los cuales 70% desconocía su diagnóstico. Según la clasificación JNC-7 30.2% de los adultos tenía HTA y 51.0% ignoraba su diagnóstico. Entre adultos con diagnóstico previo de HTA, 54.9% tuvo TA controlada. Entre el periodo 2018-2020 no se observaron cambios en las prevalencias. Conclusiones: Al menos un tercio de los adultos mexicanos tiene HTA y de ellos al menos la mitad no habían sido diagnosticados. Debe evaluarse la pertinencia de los actuales programas de diagnóstico de HTA porque el subdiagnóstico y mal control pueden ocasionar complicaciones y la muerte.

Abstract: Objective: To describe the prevalence of hypertension in Mexican adults, the proportion with controlled blood pressure (BP), and the trend in the 2018-2020 period. Materials and methods: BP was measured in 9 844 adults who participated in the National Health and Nutrition Survey (Ensanut, in Spanish) 2020. They were considered to have hypertension or BP controlled when adults met the Seventh Joint National Committee (JNC-7) or American Heart Association (AHA) criteria. Results: The prevalence of hypertension was 49.4% (according to AHA), of which 70.0% were unaware of their diagnosis. When using JNC-7 criteria, 30.2% of the adults had hypertension and 51.0% were unaware of your diagnosis. Among adults with a previous diagnosis of hypertension, 54.9% had controlled BP. Between the 2018-2020 period, no changes in prevalences were observed. Conclusions: At least a third of Mexican adults have hypertension and of them, at least half have not been diagnosed. The relevance of current hypertension diagnostic programs should be evaluated because underdiagnosis and poor control can lead to complications and death.

Delaying sexual onset: outcome of a comprehensive sexuality education initiative for adolescents in public schools.

BACKGROUND: A common risk behavior in adolescence is the early initiation of unprotected sex that exposes adolescents to an unplanned pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections. Schools are an ideal place to strengthen adolescents' sexual knowledge and modify their behavior, guiding them to exercise responsible sexuality. The purpose of this article was to evaluate the knowledge of public secondary school teachers who received training in comprehensive education in sexuality (CES) and estimate the counseling's effect on students' sexual behavior. METHODS: Seventy-five public school teachers were trained in participatory and innovative techniques for CES. The change in teacher knowledge (n = 75) was assessed before and after the training using t-tests, Wilcoxon ranks tests and a Generalized Estimate Equation model. The students' sexual and reproductive behavior was evaluated in intervention (n = 650) and comparison schools (n = 555). We fit a logistic regression model using the students' sexual debut as a dependent variable. RESULTS: Teachers increased their knowledge of sexuality after training from 5.3 to 6.1 (p < 0.01). 83.3% of students in the intervention school reported using a contraceptive method in their last sexual relation, while 58.3% did so in the comparison schools. The students in comparison schools were 4.7 (p < 0.01) times more likely to start sexual initiation than students in the intervention schools. CONCLUSION: Training in CES improved teachers' knowledge about sexual and reproductive health. Students who received counseling from teachers who were trained in participatory and innovative techniques for CES used more contraceptive protection and delayed sexual debut.

Cognitive Control, Cognitive Biases and Emotion Regulation in Depression: A New Proposal for an Integrative Interplay Model.

Research traditions on cognition and depression focus on relatively unconnected aspects of cognitive functioning. On one hand, the neuropsychological perspective has concentrated on cognitive control difficulties as a prominent feature of this condition. On the other hand, the clinical psychology perspective has focused on cognitive biases and repetitive negative patterns of thinking (i.e., rumination) for emotional information. A review of the literature from both fields reveals that difficulties are more evident for mood-congruent materials, suggesting that cognitive control difficulties interact with cognitive biases to hinder cognitive switching, working memory updating, and inhibition of irrelevant information. Connecting research from these two traditions, we propose a novel integrative cognitive model of depression in which the interplay between mood-congruent cognitive control difficulties, cognitive biases, and rumination may ultimately lead to ineffective emotion-regulation strategies to downregulate negative mood and upregulate positive mood.

Cognitive predictors of self-awareness in patients with acquired brain injury along neuropsychological rehabilitation.

Previous research has identified a critical role of executive function and memory in self-awareness, a metacognitive capacity often impaired in acquired brain injury. Through this observational study, we aimed to explore the effect of cognitive rehabilitation on the predictive value of these variables, as also whether any of them can predict the level of self-awareness once the cognitive rehabilitation is completed. 69 patients underwent a neuropsychological assessment, including self-awareness, at admission to and discharge from a cognitive rehabilitation process. Regression analysis was performed at these two moments and a third one was conducted to evaluate whether any of the variables at admission predicted the level of self-awareness at discharge. Verbal fluency was found to be the best predictor of self-awareness, both at admission and discharge. In addition, inhibition and cognitive flexibility, as well as episodic memory, appeared as significant predictors of post-rehabilitation self-awareness. Finally, verbal fluency was revealed as the unique pre-rehabilitation predictor of subsequent level of self-awareness following rehabilitation. While post-acute self-awareness is predicted by non-specific executive measures, the cognitive improvement putatively induced by neuropsychological rehabilitation reveals the contribution of more specific executive and memory functions. Importantly, pre-rehabilitation verbal fluency scores predicted the level of self-awareness after cognitive rehabilitation.

Epidemiología de la hipertensión arterial en adultos mexicanos: diagnóstico, control y tendencias. Ensanut 2020.

Objetivo. Describir la prevalencia de hipertensión arterial (HTA) en adultos mexicanos, la proporción que tiene tensión arterial (TA) controlada y la tendencia en el periodo 2018-2020. Material y métodos. Se midió la TA a 9 844 adultos en la Encuesta Nacional de Salud y Nutrición (Ensanut) 2020. Se consideró que tenían HTA o TA controlada cuando cumplían los criterios del Seventh Joint National Committee (JNC-7) o American Heart Association (AHA). Resultados. La prevalencia de HTA fue 49.4% (según AHA), de los cuales 70% desconocía su diagnóstico. Según la clasificación JNC-7, 30.2% de los adultos tenía HTA y 51.0% ignoraba su diagnóstico. Entre adultos con diagnóstico previo de HTA, 54.9% tuvo TA controlada. Entre el periodo 2018-2020 no se observaron cambios en las prevalencias. Conclusiones. Al menos un tercio de los adultos mexicanos tiene HTA y de ellos al menos la mitad no habían sido diagnosticados. Debe evaluarse la pertinencia de los actuales programas de diagnóstico de HTA porque el subdiagnóstico y mal control pueden ocasionar complicaciones y la muerte.

The Self-Awareness Multilevel Assessment Scale, a New Tool for the Assessment of Self-Awareness After Severe Acquired Brain Injury: Preliminary Findings.

Self-awareness (SA) is frequently impaired after severe acquired brain injury (sABI) and may lead to reduced subject's compliance to treatment, worse functional outcome, and high caregiver distress. Considering the multifaceted nature of SA, a specific and effective assessment is crucial to address treatment of impairment of SA (ISA). Many tools can currently assess ISA; however, they have some important limits. In the present study, we proposed the Self-Awareness Multilevel Assessment Scale (SAMAS), a new scale for assessment of SA at different levels (i.e., declarative, emergent, and anticipatory) across all domains of functioning. The SAMAS has been designed to be administered by the cognitive/behavioral therapist with the involvement of a patient's relative. Findings showed that the SAMAS allowed specifically assessing SA at a declarative level and on all possible functional domains. More interestingly, it seems also able to assess both emergent and anticipatory SA, thus overcoming some important limits of other current assessment methods. Our findings are consistent with a holistic perspective of the patient with sABI because thanks to the combined use of assessing tools, the SAMAS can provide an accurate diagnosis of ISA, thus better addressing the neurorehabilitation treatment and, accordingly, reducing the possible occurrence of its primary and secondary implications.

Self-Awareness Moderates the Association Between Executive Dysfunction and Functional Independence After Acquired Brain Injury.

OBJECTIVE: Impaired self-awareness (SA) is a common symptom after suffering acquired brain injury (ABI) which interferes with patient's rehabilitation and their functional independence. SA is associated with executive function and declarative memory, two cognitive functions that are related to participants' daily living functionality. Through this observational study, we aim to explore whether SA may play a moderator role in the relation between these two cognitive processes and functional independence. METHOD: A sample of 69 participants with ABI completed a neuropsychological assessment focused on executive function and declarative memory which also included a measure of SA and functional independence. Two separated linear models were performed including functional independence, SA, and two neuropsychological factors (declarative memory and executive function) derived from a previous principal component analysis. RESULTS: Moderation analysis show a significant interaction between SA and executive function, reflecting an association between lower executive functioning and poorer functional outcome, only in participants with low levels of SA. Notwithstanding, declarative memory do not show a significant interaction with SA, even though higher declarative memory scores were associated with better functional independence. CONCLUSIONS: SA seems to play a moderator effect between executive function, but not declarative memory, and functional independence. Accordingly, participants with executive deficits and low levels of SA might benefit from receiving specific SA interventions in the first instance, which would in turn positively impact on their functional independence.

Analysis of causes of death using verbal autopsies and vital registration in Hidalgo, Mexico.

INTRODUCTION: Verbal autopsy (VA) is a useful tool for evaluating causes of death, especially in places with limited or no vital registration systems. The Population Health Metrics Research Consortium (PHMRC) developed a validated questionnaire and a set of automated methods to determine the cause of death from a VA. However, the application of these methods needs to be tested in a community environment. OBJECTIVE: To estimate cause-specific mortality fractions (CSMFs) using VAs and compare them against those obtained in the vital statistics of the state of Hidalgo, Mexico. METHODS: A random sample of deaths occurred in 2009 was selected from vital statistics in the state of Hidalgo. The full PHMRC validated VA instrument was applied to the relatives of the deceased, and the cause of death was determined using Tariff's automated method. The causes of death were grouped into 34 causes for adults, 21 for children and 6 for newborns. Results were compared with cause of death on death certificates for all deaths. RESULTS: A total of 1,198 VAs were analyzed. The Tariff method was not able to assign a cause of death in only 9% of adults, 2% of children and 7% of neonatal deaths. The CSMFs obtained from the Tariff method were similar in some cases to those of vital statistics (e.g. cirrhosis), but different in others (e.g. sepsis). CONCLUSION: The application of VAs in a community sample, analyzed with the Tariff method, allowed assigning a cause of death to most of the cases, with results similar to those of vital statistics for most conditions. This tool can be useful to strengthen the quality of vital statistics.

Efficacy of an intervention programme for rehabilitation of awareness of deficit after acquired brain injury: A pilot study.

BACKGROUND: Impaired Awareness of Deficit (AD) is a frequent symptom after suffering acquired brain injury (ABI) that severely influences patients' daily lives. PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: Pilot study to assess the effectiveness of a structured intervention programme which was developed from a biopsychosocial approach, and relied on common therapeutic strategies of proven effectiveness. METHODS: We assessed the effectiveness of our intervention on a sample of 60 patients with ABI, 30 of whom received the specific AD intervention programme, while the other 30 followed an equivalent rehabilitation approach where they received no specific intervention on AD. AD were assessed before and after the specific intervention on AD through an ad-hoc designed questionnaire. RESULTS: This study reports that patients who received the proposed programme demonstrated significant improvement in their level of AD, as compared to the control group. This improvement was observable on all the proposed dimensions of awareness. Interestingly, results from correlation analysis also showed that patients with lower initial AD were those who exhibited a greater degree of improvement following the intervention. CONCLUSIONS: This research provides evidence in favour of the effectiveness of implementing an intervention programme for AD in the context a global rehabilitation process for patients with ABI.

A shortened verbal autopsy instrument for use in routine mortality surveillance systems.

BACKGROUND: Verbal autopsy (VA) is recognized as the only feasible alternative to comprehensive medical certification of deaths in settings with no or unreliable vital registration systems. However, a barrier to its use by national registration systems has been the amount of time and cost needed for data collection. Therefore, a short VA instrument (VAI) is needed. In this paper we describe a shortened version of the VAI developed for the Population Health Metrics Research Consortium (PHMRC) Gold Standard Verbal Autopsy Validation Study using a systematic approach. METHODS: We used data from the PHMRC validation study. Using the Tariff 2.0 method, we first established a rank order of individual questions in the PHMRC VAI according to their importance in predicting causes of death. Second, we reduced the size of the instrument by dropping questions in reverse order of their importance. We assessed the predictive performance of the instrument as questions were removed at the individual level by calculating chance-corrected concordance and at the population level with cause-specific mortality fraction (CSMF) accuracy. Finally, the optimum size of the shortened instrument was determined using a first derivative analysis of the decline in performance as the size of the VA instrument decreased for adults, children, and neonates. RESULTS: The full PHMRC VAI had 183, 127, and 149 questions for adult, child, and neonatal deaths, respectively. The shortened instrument developed had 109, 69, and 67 questions, respectively, representing a decrease in the total number of questions of 40-55%. The shortened instrument, with text, showed non-significant declines in CSMF accuracy from the full instrument with text of 0.4%, 0.0%, and 0.6% for the adult, child, and neonatal modules, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: We developed a shortened VAI using a systematic approach, and assessed its performance when administered using hand-held electronic tablets and analyzed using Tariff 2.0. The length of a VA questionnaire was shortened by almost 50% without a significant drop in performance. The shortened VAI developed reduces the burden of time and resources required for data collection and analysis of cause of death data in civil registration systems.

Improving performance of the Tariff Method for assigning causes of death to verbal autopsies.

BACKGROUND: Reliable data on the distribution of causes of death (COD) in a population are fundamental to good public health practice. In the absence of comprehensive medical certification of deaths, the only feasible way to collect essential mortality data is verbal autopsy (VA). The Tariff Method was developed by the Population Health Metrics Research Consortium (PHMRC) to ascertain COD from VA information. Given its potential for improving information about COD, there is interest in refining the method. We describe the further development of the Tariff Method. METHODS: This study uses data from the PHMRC and the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) of Australia studies. Gold standard clinical diagnostic criteria for hospital deaths were specified for a target cause list. VAs were collected from families using the PHMRC verbal autopsy instrument including health care experience (HCE). The original Tariff Method (Tariff 1.0) was trained using the validated PHMRC database for which VAs had been collected for deaths with hospital records fulfilling the gold standard criteria (validated VAs). In this study, the performance of Tariff 1.0 was tested using VAs from household surveys (community VAs) collected for the PHMRC and NHMRC studies. We then corrected the model to account for the previous observed biases of the model, and Tariff 2.0 was developed. The performance of Tariff 2.0 was measured at individual and population levels using the validated PHMRC database. RESULTS: For median chance-corrected concordance (CCC) and mean cause-specific mortality fraction (CSMF) accuracy, and for each of three modules with and without HCE, Tariff 2.0 performs significantly better than the Tariff 1.0, especially in children and neonates. Improvement in CSMF accuracy with HCE was 2.5%, 7.4%, and 14.9% for adults, children, and neonates, respectively, and for median CCC with HCE it was 6.0%, 13.5%, and 21.2%, respectively. Similar levels of improvement are seen in analyses without HCE. CONCLUSIONS: Tariff 2.0 addresses the main shortcomings of the application of the Tariff Method to analyze data from VAs in community settings. It provides an estimation of COD from VAs with better performance at the individual and population level than the previous version of this method, and it is publicly available for use.

Emotional interference-based forgetting in short-term memory. Cognitive inhibition of pleasant but not unpleasant biologically relevant distractors.

Emotional stimuli automatically recruit attentional resources. Although this usually brings more adaptive responses, it may suppose a disadvantage when emotional information is task-irrelevant and should be ignored. Previous studies have shown how emotional stimuli with a negative content exert a greater interference than neutral stimuli during a concurrent working memory (WM) task. However, the impact of positively valenced stimuli as interference has not been addressed to date. In three experiments and one re-analysis we explore the impact of pleasant and unpleasant emotional distractors during WM maintenance. The results suggest that our cognitive control can cope with the interference posed by pleasant distractors as well as with the interference posed by neutral stimuli. However, unpleasant distractors are harder to control in the context of WM maintenance. As unpleasant stimuli usually convey relevant information that we should not to ignore, our executive control seems to be less able to reallocate cognitive resources after unpleasant distraction.

Validating estimates of prevalence of non-communicable diseases based on household surveys: the symptomatic diagnosis study.

BACKGROUND: Easy-to-collect epidemiological information is critical for the more accurate estimation of the prevalence and burden of different non-communicable diseases around the world. Current measurement is restricted by limitations in existing measurement systems in the developing world and the lack of biometry tests for non-communicable diseases. Diagnosis based on self-reported signs and symptoms ("Symptomatic Diagnosis," or SD) analyzed with computer-based algorithms may be a promising method for collecting timely and reliable information on non-communicable disease prevalence. The objective of this study was to develop and assess the performance of a symptom-based questionnaire to estimate prevalence of non-communicable diseases in low-resource areas. METHODS: As part of the Population Health Metrics Research Consortium study, we collected 1,379 questionnaires in Mexico from individuals who suffered from a non-communicable disease that had been diagnosed with gold standard diagnostic criteria or individuals who did not suffer from any of the 10 target conditions. To make the diagnosis of non-communicable diseases, we selected the Tariff method, a technique developed for verbal autopsy cause of death calculation. We assessed the performance of this instrument and analytical techniques at the individual and population levels. RESULTS: The questionnaire revealed that the information on health care experience retrieved achieved 66.1% (95% uncertainty interval [UI], 65.6-66.5%) chance corrected concordance with true diagnosis of non-communicable diseases using health care experience and 0.826 (95% UI, 0.818-0.834) accuracy in its ability to calculate fractions of different causes. SD is also capable of outperforming the current estimation techniques for conditions estimated by questionnaire-based methods. CONCLUSIONS: SD is a viable method for producing estimates of the prevalence of non-communicable diseases in areas with low health information infrastructure. This technology can provide higher-resolution prevalence data, more flexible data collection, and potentially individual diagnoses for certain conditions.

Búsqueda intencionada y reclasificación de muertes maternas en México: el efecto en la distribución de las causas / Intentional search and reclassification of maternal deaths in Mexico: The effect on the distribution of causes

Objetivo. Corregir la mala clasificación y mejorar la calidad de la información sobre la mortalidad materna en México. Material y métodos. A través de los registros clínicos y autopsias verbales, se estudiaron todas las defunciones certificadas como maternas y una selección de defunciones de mujeres en edad fértil, cuyas causas fueron consideradas como sospechosas de encubrir una muerte materna; todas ocurridas durante 2011 en México. Resultados. La búsqueda intencionada y reclasificación de muertes maternas permitió rescatar más de 100 muertes que no habían sido registradas ni codificadas inicialmente como maternas y se ratificaron o rectificaron las causas anotadas en los certificados de defunción. Este procedimiento también permitió reclasificar como muertes maternas 297 defunciones de la base preliminar del Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía. Conclusiones. La Búsqueda Intencionada y Reclasificación de Muertes Maternas es un procedimiento muy útil para mejorar la calidad de la información sobre la mortalidad materna.

Objective. To correct the misclassification and improve the quality of information on maternal mortality in Mexico. Materials and methods. Using clinical records and verbal autopsies, we studied all deaths certified as maternal deaths as well as a selection of deaths of women of childbearing age whose causes were considered as suspected of hiding a maternal death, all of which occurred during 2011 within Mexico. Results. The deliberate search of maternal deaths and reclassification allowed the rescue of just over 100 deaths that were not originally registered or coded as maternal and confirmed or corrected the causes of death recorded on death certificates as confirmed maternal deaths. This procedure also allowed the reclassification of 297 maternal deaths of women in the groundwork of the National Institute of Statistics and Geography. Conclusions. International Search and Reclassification of Maternal Deaths is a very useful procedure for improving the classification of cases that were not classified as maternal deaths and the effect was greater with the coding of indirect obstetric deaths.

Using verbal autopsy to measure causes of death: the comparative performance of existing methods.

BACKGROUND: Monitoring progress with disease and injury reduction in many populations will require widespread use of verbal autopsy (VA). Multiple methods have been developed for assigning cause of death from a VA but their application is restricted by uncertainty about their reliability. METHODS: We investigated the validity of five automated VA methods for assigning cause of death: InterVA-4, Random Forest (RF), Simplified Symptom Pattern (SSP), Tariff method (Tariff), and King-Lu (KL), in addition to physician review of VA forms (PCVA), based on 12,535 cases from diverse populations for which the true cause of death had been reliably established. For adults, children, neonates and stillbirths, performance was assessed separately for individuals using sensitivity, specificity, Kappa, and chance-corrected concordance (CCC) and for populations using cause specific mortality fraction (CSMF) accuracy, with and without additional diagnostic information from prior contact with health services. A total of 500 train-test splits were used to ensure that results are robust to variation in the underlying cause of death distribution. RESULTS: Three automated diagnostic methods, Tariff, SSP, and RF, but not InterVA-4, performed better than physician review in all age groups, study sites, and for the majority of causes of death studied. For adults, CSMF accuracy ranged from 0.764 to 0.770, compared with 0.680 for PCVA and 0.625 for InterVA; CCC varied from 49.2% to 54.1%, compared with 42.2% for PCVA, and 23.8% for InterVA. For children, CSMF accuracy was 0.783 for Tariff, 0.678 for PCVA, and 0.520 for InterVA; CCC was 52.5% for Tariff, 44.5% for PCVA, and 30.3% for InterVA. For neonates, CSMF accuracy was 0.817 for Tariff, 0.719 for PCVA, and 0.629 for InterVA; CCC varied from 47.3% to 50.3% for the three automated methods, 29.3% for PCVA, and 19.4% for InterVA. The method with the highest sensitivity for a specific cause varied by cause. CONCLUSIONS: Physician review of verbal autopsy questionnaires is less accurate than automated methods in determining both individual and population causes of death. Overall, Tariff performs as well or better than other methods and should be widely applied in routine mortality surveillance systems with poor cause of death certification practices.