[Babase] Dcause

Daphne Onderdonk babase@www.eco.princeton.edu
Fri, 07 May 2004 11:23:58 -0400


Hi all,

I've been getting together the files Steph needs to update the dcauses
(Steph, I will send you those separately).  A few things have come up as
I've been looking at it.

1) There were already quite a few individuals with a status of 1 and a
dcause of 0 (in the old list - before I changed the pre-01b dcauses to
0).  I imagine this will be a problem since we are doing this update of
dcauses to avoid having 0s in the dcause column.  Do we want to just
make them all 7s (unknown), or try to assign real dcauses to them?

2) There are many individuals with a status of 2 or 3 that have
dcauses.  We haven't been using status codes other than 1 lately, but
they're in there for the older data.  Do we want these to have dcauses,
or not?  Most, but not all, seem to be 4s (old unknown).

3)

> To clarify: abortions have a (new) dcause of either 4 or 7.
> (5 is not used for abortions, right?)

We have been using 7 (new unknown) for aborts (I have a note on the
dcause definition list from a conversation with Jeanne and Susan about
this).  Karl, I'm not sure if you mean old 4 or new 4.  Old 4 was
unknown.  New 4 is pathology/congenital problems, which to my knowledge
we have not used for aborts.  What were the rules that you had for
dcauses of aborts, Karl?  So I think we are using 7 for aborts, except
potentially for cases when the abort is due to the death of the mother
(see below).

4) The situation that needs clarifying is when the fetus dies because
the mother dies.  At the beginning of the new dcause definition list, it
says the following:

If a mother and infant disappear at the same time and a cause is
attributed to the mother's death, the same cause is attributed to the
infant's death unless contraindicated by available evidence.

When Jeanne and Suan and I talked about dcauses earlier, and it was
decided that this applied to infants AND fetuses (I have another note
about this on the sheet).  Do we want to stick with this?  As I see it,
this would have 2 implications.  First, it would mean that aborts, if
they are due to the mom's death, would NOT be restricted to certain
dcauses - they could get whatever dcause was assigned to the mother.
Second, it means that an infant (or fetus, if that's what we decide)
would not get a dcause of 5 (loss of mother in both old and new lists)
unless the mother's cause of death is unknown.  (Right?  Am I
interpreting this correctly?)  So I think there are some 5s for infants
(and maybe fetuses) that should have the mother's dcause instead.
Steph, I think it would be a good idea to check for these 5s, both in
the pre-01b list I'm sending you, and in the post-01b data currently in
Biograph, and see if they shouldn't get the mother's dcause instead.

Let me know if anything needs clarifying.
Daphne