Mortality statistics - principal causes of death

BrianD3

http://www.cso.ie/statistics/principalcausesofdeath.htm
I was looking at these recently and was surprised at the reduction in deaths from Diseases of the Circulatory System from 1998-2006

1998 - 13,200 deaths
2006 - 9600 deaths

Is this due to advances in medicine plus reduction in people smoking? It seems like a big reduction in less than a decade.

Diabetes Mellitus is listed on its own, deaths from it are not too far off those from breast cancer with each of these now causing more deaths than road accidents.

One that I find surprising is that around 1000 die every year from "other injury and poisoning", I wouldn't have thought the figure would be anything near that.

Anyone got a comment on the cancer death stats?

tallaght01

They're just raw numbers, as opposed to rates.

But there have been great successes in the prevention of ischaemic heart disease over the last decade, so those figures probably reflect that.

Depends on the population as to the reasons for that. But the evidence in the UK seems to point towards personal preventative factors, like reduction in smoking, better BP control, and control of lipid profile.

But age specific mortality rates would be nice to see.

DrIndy

Its interesting anyway - but remember the old axiom.

There are 3 kinds of lies. Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics.

We all need to die of something - so if we reduce the incidence and cause of death of one disease, we increase another.

If you go back a few hundred years - heart disease was unheard of - everyone died of infection. We beat that and so there is something else. Heart disease is a very multifactorial illness and the improvements may be due to new treatment like clot-busting drugs, population intervention like lifestyle or better penetration of preventative drugs to reduce risk. However, reduce one statistic - you transfer to another as we will all die from something. This may explain the rise of cancer.

Another interesting example:

Searching the Royal Society for Prevention of Accidents site.... http://www.hassandlass.org.uk

I searched the total number of accidents caused by ironing boards (NOT Irons) and Pedal Bins - and found that in 2002 3424 people were injured (and attended A&E) by Either OR of these during that time.

Cause of accident "Leaf" - 1230 in 2002, "bottle bank" caused 246 in 2002.

These are very amusing statistics (rather than the serious ones the OP posted).

They had a famous "Tea Cosy" statistic which said 34 people stated this was their cause of accident - trying to find it unsuccessfully......

BrianD3

Thanks for the responses, I'm not a medical professional but do have an interest in this topic. Anecdotally, there seem to be fewer people dying from heart attacks in recent years. When I was in school in the 80s till the mid 90s I recall several instances where schoolmates' Dads died of heart attacks aged in their 40s or 50s. There seems to be less of that these days.

I agree about needing to be careful when it comes to any statistics and I agree that the rise in cancer deaths is probably partly attributable to the reduction in circulatory disease deaths. According to figures on another site, new cases of cancer are increasing faster than the number of deaths so perhaps a smaller % of those who develop cancer are dying from it. Then again, there is a statistic that says there has been a disproportionate increase in non-melanoma skin cancers in the last few years, the more new cases of this usually curable cancer there are, the better the death rate for cancer looks.

On the topic of cancer I sometimes read a blog by Dr Heinz Josef Lenz, a colorectal cancer specialist in California. He often talks about improvements in bowel cancer treatment this decade. Small improvements obviously but it appears that a certain (small but increasing) percentage of those with liver mets are considered potentially curable when they would have been considered terminal not so long ago.