Page 323 - Contributed Paper Session (CPS) - Volume 7

CPS2113 Lucia Pereira B. et al.

Automatic assignment of underlying cause of
death based on verbal autopsy instrument
Lucia Pereira Barroso, Carmen Saldiva, Paulo Saldiva
University of São Paulo

Abstract
Many of the deaths in low or middle income countries occur without medical
attention, especially in rural areas. Verbal Autopsy (VA) are being used to
provide information on cause of death. The verbal autopsy questionnaire has
a reduced version, which is being validated in Brazil for 22 causes of death in
adults. This questionnaire has been applied previously in other countries in a
visit to the family of the deceased few months after the death. In Brazil, the
application is being made at the Death Verification Service of São Paulo
(SVOC), shortly after the death of the individual. The attribution of
the underlying cause of death can be made based on the answers given by
the family, using an automatic method based on the Tariff Score, applied in
SmartVA software, and using weights obtained in a study previously
developed in other countries. The Tariff Method was developed by the
Population Health Metrics Research Consortium (PHMRC). The SmartVA
software was developed by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. The
objectives of this study are to present the automatic method of assigning
the underlying cause of death based on a verbal autopsy instrument and to
show preliminary results.

Keywords
Verbal autopsy; Tariff Method; SmartVA; cause of death

Introduction
Many of the deaths in low- or middle-income countries occur without
medical attention, especially in rural areas. Verbal Autopsy (VA) are being used
to provide information on cause of death. The verbal autopsy questionnaire
has a reduced version, which is being validated in Brazil for 22 causes of death
in adults. This questionnaire has been applied previously in other countries in
a visit to the family of the deceased few months after the death. In Brazil, the
application is being made at the Death Verification Service of São Paulo
(SVOC), shortly after the death of the individual.
The attribution of the underlying cause of death can be made based on
the answers given by the family, using an automatic method based on the
Tariff Score, applied in SmartVA software, and using weights obtained in a
study previously developed in other countries. The Tariff Method was

310 | I S I W S C 2 0 1 9