The quality of certification of deaths due to external causes in the city of Fortaleza in the State of Ceará, Brazil.

The article analyzes the quality of information of deaths from external causes in Fortaleza, in the State of Ceará, Brazil. They analyzed the completeness of the information of the death certificate (DO) and the correlation between the underlying cause of death described in the OF and registered in the Mortality Information System (SIM ).We used all the original statements of deaths from external causes, occurred in 2010, of residents in Fortaleza. The study population was 2109 DO. The statements were individually checked seeking to identify the completion of the fields and the basic cause attested the coding of the underlying cause in this DO and compared with the SIM was held. The fields with the highest completion rates were: name (100%), place of residence (100%), mother's name (99.6%), place of birth (99.1%), and sex (98.8%). The fields with the lowest completion rates were: place of occurrence (55%), race/skin color (38.4%), and schooling (34%). They observed inadequacies in the completion of the underlying cause. In DO are reported injuries found and not the circumstances of the death. There was poor level of concordance between the basic cause of DO and registered on the SIM (kappa 0.07). They suggest awareness strategies and training of medical examiners.