The impact of the investigation on deaths classified as garbage codes on the quality of the cause-of-death information in the Northeast region, Brazil.

OBJECTIVE to evaluate the impact of investigation of deaths classified as garbage codes (GC) on the quality of the causes-of-death information in municipalities in the Northeast region of Brazil in 2017. METHOD an investigation was conducted on the deaths classified as GC in 18 municipalities in the Northeast region as follows: identification of deaths with priority GC; review of medical records from health services and forensic institutes; and evaluation of the reclassification of causes of death according to the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) and groupings of the Global Burden of Disease 2015 (GBD 2015). RESULTS among 18,681 deaths classified as priority GC, 7,352 (39%) were investigated and, of these, 5,160 (70%) had reclassified causes, of which 4,087 (79%) were changed to specified causes. Ill-defined causes (n = 4,392) were the most frequent among GC and those with a higher proportion of cause change (80%), and 57% were changed to specified causes. The reduction of GC contributed to the detection of a wide variety of specific causes according to groups of level 3 of the GBD 2015, being the interpersonal violence the cause that obtained the highest percentage change (11.8%). CONCLUSION The investigation of deaths with priority GC proved to be an important strategy to specify causes of death, and it may influence the formulation, execution and evaluation of health policies.