Utilidad del correcto llenado de los certificados de defunción y su impacto en la vigilancia sanitaria

Abstract

Introduction: The death certificate is a legal medical document, which provides both statistical, epidemiological and legal data. It is a document established by the World Health Organization that allows government agencies to collect vital statistics to obtain official documentation of deaths and helps identify pressing health problems. Objective: To outline the usefulness of correctly filling out death certificates by reviewing updated bibliographic sources for legal, epidemiological and statistical credibility at the health level. Methodology: it is a study carried out through a bibliographic review obtained from databases such as: ELSEVIER, Scielo, JMIR publications, PubMed, PAHO, SAGE journals and Redalyc. Results: 60 articles were found, of which 28 bibliographies were chosen that mention the concepts, structure and important aspects of the death certificate, of which 5 correspond to guidelines and 23 scientific articles, of which 4 correspond to quartile 1, 9 to quartile 2, 7 of quartile 3 and 3 with quartile 4 Conclusion: Based on the systematic review, it is evident that health professionals do not know the proper completion of the death certificate, this justifies that doctors should be trained in the certification to improve the accuracy and legal, epidemiological, and statistical utility of reason-of-death data.