Mortality of Veteran Participants in the CROSSROADS Nuclear Test (1996) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
Appendix F: Verification of Completeness and Accuracy of Mortality Ascertainment
Appendix F: Verification of Completeness and Accuracy of Mortality Ascertainment
Pages 128-139
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 128... ...
F Verification of Completeness and Accuracy of Mortality Ascertainment ASSESSMENT OF COMPLETENESS We describe the procedural steps, along with success rates, involved (Table F-1) in determining vital status information about the 73,910 Navy personnel considered in most of this study's analyses.
|
From page 129... ...
Total % 129 All submitted to BIRLS 100.0 100.0 73,910 100.0 Of those submitted to BIRLS, % found on BIRLS 87.4 88.1 87.7 Of those found on BIRLS, % with indication of death 38.7 37.9 38.3 Of those with indication on BIRLS of death, indicated by % date of death 96.9 96.9 96.9 % FARC folder location only 3.1 3.1 3.1 Of those with indication on BIRLS of death, % with claims folder location noted in BIRLS 80.3 81.3 80.8 Of those with claims folder location noted on BIRI S.' % in VA regional offices 71.1 70.7 70.9 % in FARCs 28.6 29.3 28.9 Submitted to VAMI 100.0 100.0 24,762 100.0 Of those submitted to VAMI, %found 92.6 9! ~91 ~ A veteran could be "not found" on the Beneficiary Identification and Locator Subsystem (BIRLS)
|
From page 130... ...
% No. % Cause and Date10,436 86.39,649 89.3 20,085 8' Cause only7 0.110 0.1 17 Date only1,639 13.61,135 10.5 2,774 1 Neither10 0.110 0.1 20 Total dead12,092 10010,804 100 22,896 1 ASSESSMENT OF VALIDITY Mortality Ascertainment To assess the quality of VA records' vital status information, we did an independent search of two federal' non-VA, databases.
|
From page 131... ...
The HCFA enrollment files used in this examination of VA mortality ascertainment are of two kinds. The first kind of file is a called an "alpha search file" and the second a "vital status file." Both files contain information about HCFA beneficiaries, primarily Medicare beneficiaries, and their vital status.
|
From page 132... ...
In general, vital status data Tom HCFA validated the VA results. Disregarding nonmatches, the overwhelming proportion of subjects shown dead by the VA were dead according to HCFA; the same was true for living subjects.
|
From page 133... ...
133 C~ o Ct C~ Ct ._ ._ Ct P~ VO a ¢ o C~ cq o o ._ Ct a, o C~ Ct VO Ct ._ Ct ¢ o o C~ ._ Ct o In O o\ 00 o\ O O ~ V z V, C: .O .
|
From page 134... ...
Add to this an estimated death rate of around 30 percent and a LTFU rate of 15 percent, and the arithmetic works out as follows. In a group of some 1,000 World War II veterans, 700 will be living and 300 dead.
|
From page 135... ...
of NDI Matches Returned No. of MFUA Records for Each Record Submitted Submitted 1 NDI record 2 NDI records 4 6 7 8 9 10 211 NDI records MFUA records involved in matches Nonmatching user records Records rejected Total submitted by user 27259 646 386 230 150 109 90 71 53 41 424 4,459 540 9 5,108 135 Of 5,108 records MFUA sent, NDI proposed at least one match for 4,459.
|
From page 136... ...
136 o ._ o .~ Ct go i_ o o V)
|
From page 137... ...
Less than a third of MFUA-considered "Dead" were reported as "Dead" based on the HCFA enrollment tapes; many deaths occurred in our study cohort before 1980. Vital status records at two databases external to VA confirm our expectation that individuals we label "Lost to follow-up" are probably "Alive." Looking at controls and participants together, NDI reported as "Dead" 2.4 percent of individuals MFUA considered Alive, 8.2 percent of these MFUA considered LTFU, and 87.7 percent of those MFUA considered "Dead." For those categories, HCFA reported a similar trend with lower values (see preceding paragraph)
|
From page 138... ...
of Death Certificates Disease Category 166 All leukemias 244 All other hematopoietic or lymphatic cancers 30 All other diseases of the blood and blood-forming organs 102 Sample of all other malignant neoplasms 83 Sample of noncancer disease deaths 16 Sample of external causes of death Of the 410 records sent for recoding because they were initially coded as leukemia (ICD9 204.0-208.9) or other lymphopoietic cancer (ICD9 200.0203.8~32 as the underlying cause of death, there were 33 discrepant pairs.
|
From page 139... ...
All others matched exactly. A smaller proportion 3.4 percent (14/410:of the lymphopoietic cancer deaths had discrepancies in the coded underlying cause of death that would have changed the cause-of-death category used in the study analyses.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.