Final answer:
Verbal autopsies help healthcare professionals understand death counts and causes in areas without comprehensive medical reporting, aiding in calculating accurate mortality rates by considering factors such as age and sex. Also, the solution that caused red blood cells to burst was hypotonic, not isotonic.
Step-by-step explanation:
Verbal autopsies are used to gather data on the causes of death in populations where medical certification of death is not always possible or reliable. They can indeed provide healthcare professionals a better understanding of the number and causes of deaths, particularly in regions that lack comprehensive medical reporting systems.
To accurately calculate mortality rates within a population, researchers would best collect data by counting the number of individuals that died and the number of individuals that survived within a defined time period for various age groups and/or sexes. Additionally, they must account for whether the population is underestimated or overestimated, as seen in cases where studies involving animals observe the latter due to the animals learning to seek out bait.
The study of death and dying, known as thanatology, would encompass the use of verbal autopsies to understand mortality patterns. In the case of the problem regarding the isotonic saline solution, the correct answer is c. False, the solution was hypotonic, because an isotonic solution would not cause red blood cells to burst (hemolysis) as it would have the same solute concentration as the cells.