[Babase] The infamous dcauses

Karl O. Pinc babase@www.eco.princeton.edu
Sun, 16 Oct 2005 05:09:35 +0000


Hi,

In the interest of actually finishing with something
I'm looking at wrapping up BIOGRAPH and the
issue of dcauses again came up.  I'm looking for a
decision here from Jeanne and Susan.

The docs say:

Those rows that record data on fetal losses must maintain the following  
relations between their data values: the Sname and Name values must be  
NULL; the Statdate must be the same as the birth date (Birth); the  
Status must be 1 (definitely dead); and the Dcause must be 7 (unknown)  
or 5 (loss of mother). Jeanne needs to confirm that this is still the  
case since her changes to DCAUSES.

I want to change this to:

Those rows that record data on fetal losses must maintain the following  
relations between their data values: the Sname and Name values must be  
NULL; the Statdate must be the same as the birth date (Birth); and the  
Status must not be 0 (alive).

So, there are no restriction on the dcauses for fetal losses.
This is consistent with what I recall was decided, but see
below for the issues.  (I think we have no written record
of our ultimate decision.)

For the record, here's the breakdown on dcauses for fetal losses.
(Note spiffy query that manipulates summarized data.)

babase=# select count(*), dcauses.dcause, descr from biograph, dcauses  
where sname is NULL and biograph.dcause = dcauses.dcause group by  
dcauses.dcause, dcauses.descr order by count(*) desc, dcauses.dcause;

  count | dcause |             descr
-------+--------+-------------------------------
    137 |      8 | Under review
     26 |      7 | Unknown
      1 |      4 | Pathology/congenital problems
      1 |      5 | Loss of mother
(4 rows)

See Daphne's mail to the list on:
Date: Fri, 07 May 2004 11:23:58 -0400
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.
------------

I then wrote:
---------------
Everything depends on how you're querying and using the data so long as
either system of coding abort's dcauses you don't lose any information.
Note that with the old way of encoding death due to mother's death
you can query for that event directly and trace the dcause through to
the dcause of the mother.  With the new system it's easier to get
abortion cause of death but harder to tell if the death is due to
death of the mother.  With the new system the assumption is that
death is due to death of the mother when both infant and mother die
on the same day.  (Note that if they happen to die on the same day
but in separate events you can only tell if the dcause is different
for the mother and infant.  Theoretically this is a problem
with the new system's coding, the one place where information
can be lost.)  Seems like the 5 code is pretty much
redundant in the new system as it always means "unknown".
I'd consider getting rid of it for the sake of consistency.
------------

There's no more mail addressing the subject.


Karl <kop@meme.com>
Free Software:  "You don't pay back, you pay forward."
                  -- Robert A. Heinlein