摘要：Public health planning should be bas ed on reliable and timely data on the leading causes of death and disability. Civil registration of all deaths, with certification and coding of their cause by a qualified physician based on the In- ternational classification of diseases and related health problems, 1 is the preferred standard for generating cause-of-death statistics. Most deaths whose cause is certified occur in hospitals. Although not all hospitals have the same diagnos- tic tools, it seems reasonable to expect hospital-based certifying physicians to correctly identify patients' underlying causes of death, since hospitals usually have established clinical protocols for monitoring disease progression. After all, if physicians in hospitals cannot correctly ascertain their patients' cause of death, who can.
