Table 1.

Comparison of Physician coder 1 and Physician coder 2 assigned cause of early neonatal death (n=118)

Physician 1 Responses	Physician 2 Responses							Physician 1 Total n (%)	Physician Consensus n (%)
Physician 1 Responses	Preterm	Infection	Birth As- phyxia	C. Malform	Tetanus	Unknown / No Cause	Other	Physician 1 Total n (%)	Physician Consensus n (%)
Preterm	13	1	1	0	0	0	1	16 (14)	20 (17)
Neonatal Infection	2	44	4	0	1	1	0	52 (44)	52 (44)
Birth Asphyxia	3	3	28	0	0	1	0	35 (30)	31 (26)
C. Malformation	0	0	0	4	0	0	0	4 (3)	4 (3)
Tetanus	0	0	0	0	5	0	0	5 (4)	5 (4)
Unknown/no cause	0	0	0	0	0	2	0	2 (2)	4 (3)
Other	1	1	1	0	0	0	1	4 (3)	2 (2)
Physician 2 Total n (%)	19 (16)	49 (42)	34 (28)	4 (3)	6 (5)	4 (3)	2 (2)	118

The bold numbers along the diagonal indicate agreement reached independently by the two physicians. Percent agreement = 97/118=82.2%. The percentages in parenthesis, provided along the Physician 1 total column, indicate how often Physician 1 reported the cause of death out of the total. Similarly, the percentages in parenthesis, provided along the bottom Physician 2 total row indicate how often Physician 2 reported the cause of death out of the total.

The percentages provided in parenthesis in the extreme right Physician Consensus column, refer to how often the Physician Consensus reported the cause of death out of the total. Thus taking infection as an example, Physician 1 and Physician 2 concluded neonatal infection was the cause of death 52 times. Physician 1 and Physician 2 initially agreed that infection was the underlying cause of death for 44 of the 52 cases. After discussing the 13 discrepant cases where one but not both attributed the underlying cause of death to infection, the physicians came to final consensus that 8 of the 13 cases had an underlying cause of death of neonatal infection. Other causes of early neonatal death were hypothermia, low birth weight and birth trauma.