title: Under-reporting of Parkinson's disease on death certificates: a population-based study (NEDICES).
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Parkinson's disease is frequently omitted as a cause of death from death certificates. A limitation of previous studies that attempted to assess the validity of death certificates is that population-dwelling cases, with milder, undiagnosed Parkinson's disease were likely excluded. As a result, those studies likely overestimated the validity of death certificates because they did not include these milder cases. We assessed the validity of death certificates in a prospective population-based study (NEDICES), which includes previously undiagnosed Parkinson's disease cases detected during the assessment.
  
  
  METHODS
  3926 community-dwelling elderly subjects with and without Parkinson's disease were followed during a median of 12.6 years, after which the death certificates of those who died were examined. We calculated the proportion of cases of clinically diagnosed Parkinson's disease for whom a diagnosis of Parkinson's disease was certified as the basic cause of death on death certificates.
  
  
  RESULTS
  1791 (45.6%) of the 3926 participants died over a median follow-up of 7.1 years, including 82 (73.9%) deaths among 111 participants with Parkinson's disease. Parkinson's disease was rarely certified as the basic cause of death (14.6%). Gender, disease stage and the period during which the study was conducted (i.e., 1994 to 2007) did not influence the likelihood that Parkinson's disease would be reported.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our findings reinforce the notion that the reporting of Parkinson's disease on death certificates remains poor. This suggests a lack of awareness of the importance of Parkinson's disease as a cause of death.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, University Hospital "12 de Octubre", Madrid, Spain; Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red sobre Enfermedades Neurodegenerativas (CIBERNED), Spain; Department of Medicine, Complutense University, Madrid, Spain. Electronic address: jbenitol67@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Julián
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Benito-León
authors.affiliation: Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer's Disease and the Aging Brain, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA; Department of Epidemiology, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA; Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Elan D
authors.initials: ED
authors.lastname: Louis
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, University Hospital "12 de Octubre", Madrid, Spain; Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red sobre Enfermedades Neurodegenerativas (CIBERNED), Spain.
authors.forename: Alberto
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Villarejo-Galende
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, University Hospital "12 de Octubre", Madrid, Spain; Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red sobre Enfermedades Neurodegenerativas (CIBERNED), Spain; Faculty of Biosanitary Sciences, Francisco de Vitoria University, Pozuelo de Alarcón, Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: Juan Pablo
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Romero
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, University Hospital "12 de Octubre", Madrid, Spain; Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red sobre Enfermedades Neurodegenerativas (CIBERNED), Spain; Department of Medicine, Complutense University, Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: Félix
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Bermejo-Pareja
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D002423:Cause of Death; D003644:Death Certificates; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010300:Parkinson Disease / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000401:mortality*; D011153:Population
keywords: Death certificates; Elderly; Epidemiology; Parkinson's disease; Population-based study; Under-reporting