Years of life lost due to gastric cancer is increased after Bayesian correcting for misclassification in Iranian population.

AIM: To estimate the change in years of life lost (YLL) due to gastric cancer mortality after correcting for misclassification in registering causes of death using the Bayesian method.

BACKGROUND: For evaluating the health status of a country and determining priority of risk factors, some epidemiologic indicators are needed. Due to premature death, YLL is one of the most widely used indicators. To have an exact estimate of YLL, an accurate death registry data is needed, but the Iranian death registry is subject to misclassification error.

MATERIAL AND METHODS: Gastric cancer mortality data from 2006 to 2010 for Iran were extracted from national death statistics. The rate of misclassification in registered causes of deaths was estimated, using Bayesian method for each year. Then YLL of gastric cancer is estimated for different age-sex categories before and after implementing Bayesian method.

RESULTS: Using Bayesian method, the estimated misclassification rate for gastric cancer in cancer without label group were 5%, 3%, 3%, 7% and 7% respectively from 2006 to 2010. Estimated Years of life lost due to gastric cancer before correcting misclassification were respectively 111684.93, 114957.31, 112391.93, 112250.53 and 113300.92 person-years for years 2006 to 2010. After correcting misclassification, the total YLL of gastric cancer increased to 1535.19, 921.11, 908.39, 2566.39 and 2507.00 person-years, respectively from 2006 to 2010.

CONCLUSION: If health policy makers ignore the existence of misclassification in registered causes of death, they may underestimate the burden of some causes of death and overestimate some others.