Since our study is a cross-sectional design, the accurate cause-effect relationship cannot be formed, and the response of families may not be correctly related to our results.
Even vital statistics of birth and death are unrecorded in many areas of the world, much less the accurate causes of disease and death.
These findings further confirm the importance of the post-mortem examination in determining an accurate cause of death and in continuously improving and renewing the search for alternative diagnostic hypotheses during the course of critical illness, especially in immunosuppressed patients.
"While this result indicates that the child had influenza, determining an accurate cause of death requires further evaluation of other laboratory specimens and interpreting the findings in the context of the symptoms and autopsy findings," officials cautioned in Thursday's news release.
One of the limitations with YLL is that its estimation relies on accurate cause of death classification.
For this reason, estimates of relative survival are often favoured; these estimates are intended to be independent of the background risk of death in a given population while also not relying on accurate cause of death information.
Such reports, however, may not give an accurate cause of death.
Relative survival was used to approximate disease-specific survival because it does not rely on accurate cause of death coding (Dickman et al, 2004).
Establishing an accurate cause of death and correctly attributing it to IRIS is difficult in many circumstances and reported mortality rates may therefore be under- or overestimates.
19 First, YLL requires accurate cause of death information, which is avoided in LOLE since it is based on relative survival.
