[The mortality of diabetes mellitus from the perspective of multiple causes of death: encoding problems]

The statistics of causes of death is the informational basis for identifying public health problems. That is why the accurately accounting for mortality from diabetes mellitus, which is a global medical and social problem for society, is important. The study was carried out to analyze the correctness of coding death causes of diabetes mellitus and the frequency of alleged death.

The Moscow deceased population database of July 2018 - July 2019 was analyzed. Using the decision tables on codes linkages from ICD-10, incorrect codes for underline cause were established for 342 death cases from diabetes mellitus. Among 43044 cases of cardiovascular death the cases of presumed death from diabetes were detected. The analysis was carried out in the Microsoft Access 2007 software.

In 18.4% of cases, the cause of death from diabetes was encoded incorrectly. If a modification of the underline death cause is assumed due to the mention of certain diseases in any line of the Death Certificate, cases of coding for death from diabetes with wrong fourth character are more often detected when mentioning kidney diseases. If modification of the underline cause is provided for cases when information in the Death Certificate indicates that diabetes has caused the development of some diseases then the largest number of cases with incorrect coding was detected when mentioning circulatory diseases. Only in one medical organization the frequency of incorrect coding is 3.4%, in the rest it varies from 15.4% to 52.2%. Among all death causes, diabetes was only 0.41%. If to add cases of presumptive death from diabetes mellitus, then the proportion of diabetes in the structure of death causes will almost triple and reach up to 1.2%.

The quality of diagnosis and coding of death causes from diabetes has not improved in recent years. To increase it, it is advisable to organize and establish the institution of coders. It is advisable to indicate the presence of diabetes mellitus in the Death Certificate without fail and use the information from the diabetes register. It is proposed to encode the death cause from diabetes mellitus with multiple complications use line D in the Death Certificate to indicate damage to various organs and systems if it is necessary.