ESTABLISHMENT OF ACCURATE INCIDENCE RATES FOR HEAD AND SPINAL-CORD INJURIES IN DEVELOPING AND DEVELOPED-COUNTRIES - A CAPTURE-RECAPTURE APPROACH

Prevention of head and spinal cord injuries is defined as a reduction in the incidence of these disabilities. Accurate incidence data are fu ndamental to any prevention program. The current approaches toward det ermining incidence rates for head and spinal cord injuries are summari zed. Previous research has focused on passive surveillance systems and population-based registries. An alternative system for monitoring the incidence of head injuries is discussed that uses a surveillance meth odology called capture-recapture. This method employs multiple populat ion-based sources to identify cases and uses the cases that overlap be tween the sources to estimate the degree of undercount in the populati on. This estimate in turn is used to produce an ascertainment-correcte d incidence estimate. Through the use of methods such as capture-recap ture, accurate monitoring of the incidence of head and spinal injuries across developing and developed countries is indeed feasible.