Background and Design.- Several health information of people are being collected and recorded by health institutions during their lives. Among these informations called vital statistics, death statistics give information about the quality and distribution of health services in a country. They also make the comparison of them with that of other countries possible. In order to evaluate this information obtained
from death statistics, records must be sufficient and reliable. Although the death registrations are standardized, data are not reliable in our country. The aim of this study was to find out the wrong death reports by examining the death distribution occurred at Cerrahpa§a Medical School in 1998. It was also aimed to emphasize important points for having more reliable death registrations. So death certificates of
1313 death events, which occurred in our hospital in 1998 and the data from these records, which were obtained from our information center, were examined. Several distributions of these deaths are shown in the results section of this study.
Results.- Most of the deaths were occurred at 70 years of age or above (24.44%). The majority of the deaths (31.15%) occurred in the Intensive Care Units. The most frequent cause of death was reported as cardiopulmonary arrest (31.98%), cancer (18.91 %), cardiac arrest (13.63%), pulmonary arrest (6.93%). After examining the records obtained from the information center, the actual causes of death showed to be due to cancer in 28.08% of the cases, cardiac arrest in 16.76 % of the cases, pulmonary arrest in 26.37% of the cases, which altogether had been reported as cardiopulmonary arrest.
Conclusion.- 52.55% of the deaths were reported wrongly. Cancers were the most frequent cause of death at Cerrahpa§a Medical School in 1998. For having more accurate vital statistics, rules for death registration should be lectured as a course in curriculum and postgraduate education. We must start to use ICD 10, which having 900 headings on reporting and restricting of deaths.