Reliability of computerized versus manual death searches in a study of the health of Eldorado uranium workers

An epidemiological follow-up study of 16,000 uranium mine and refinery employees has made use of computerized techniques for searching a national death file. The accuracy of this computerized matching has been compared with that of corresponding manual searches based on one-eighth of the worker file. The national death file--Canadian Mortality Data Base--at Statistics Canada includes coded causes of death for all deaths back to 1950. The machine search was carried out using a generalized record linkage system based upon a probabilistic approach. The machine was more successful than the manual searchers and was also less likely to yield false linkages with death records not related to the study population. In both approaches accuracy was strongly dependent on the amount of personal identifying information available on the records being linked.