ABSTRACT
In countries where deaths have to be officially certified, the responsibility for certification falls either to the doctor who attended the patient during life or one who can reasonably be assumed to know sufficient of the clinical history to give a reasonable assessment of the cause of death. This is an ‘honest opinion, fairly given’, but many studies have shown that there is a large error rate in death certificates and that in 25-60 per cent of deaths there are significant differences between the clinician’s presumption of the cause of death and the lesions or diseases actually displayed at the autopsy.
