Talk:List of causes of death by rate

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Iatrogenic deaths

http://www.naturodoc.com/library/public_health/doctors_cause_death.htm

"Doctors Are the Third Leading Cause of Death in the U.S.

Cause 250,000 Deaths Every Year"

The above info does not seem to fit into the lists of causes of death articles - anyone up to putting this info in also somehow? Jkpjkp 15:07, 13 October 2006 (UTC) See also Iatrogenesis for more information. Jkpjkp 15:22, 13 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Where is "natural death"? A1 and A2, mostly ~I guess 213.159.118.174 (talk) 08:19, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

morbidity?

Does a similar page exist for morbidity? --Gaborgulya 15:24, 25 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Judging by a search, not yet. Perhaps you'd like to do the service of starting one. Even the basic morbidity page is tiny and could use enlargement. -R. S. Shaw 23:47, 25 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Suicide

Suicide is listed twice. First under "Intentional injuries" and then as its own entry.Danny 08:27, 28 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Many things are included on multiple lines. Suicide is in group G and group G.1 is only suicide; murder is in G and in G.2, etc. -R. S. Shaw 18:03, 28 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There are groups and sub groups.213.159.118.174 (talk) 08:15, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Timeliness of data

A box was added to the top of the article to say data on the page was not up-to-date. This is due to the fact that, as far as I have been able to determine, WHO has not reported data for a year later than 2002. The latest annual report is the 2006 one, but each report has different statistics, and the latest containing the data for this article is the 2004 report, which has data for 2002. -R. S. Shaw 04:38, 27 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"crushed by coke machine"

can this be verified? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Weirdloopyloo (talk • contribs) 09:43, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

General structure and style

No category in the diagnosis

I see here the same as in every categories on discussion boards and Wikipedia. Why is for example cancer and breast cancer separate while the latter should be a part of the former? The problem is that it makes the list longer and more complex than necessary. It therefore restricts all uses of the list. Teemu Ruskeepää (talk) 19:44, 9 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Take another look: "breast cancer" is included in "cancer", that is, the deaths for the former ( 0.84% ) are included in those of the latter ( 12.49 %). This is shown by the values in the "Group" column ("C.5" and "C"), as explained in the article. This allows the reader to pick out the information desired, whether for cancer generally or breast cancer more specifically. -R. S. Shaw (talk) 07:52, 10 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I see but I saw that the percentages do not coincide. There are many forms of cancer, not to mention other parts, which have unique percentage of the whole gender class. The sum of all cancer percentages should amount to the cancer percentage of the deceases. Instead they amount to the percentage of all deceases. They should be part of the whole cancer percentage, not the gender percentage. Mind you, all chat forums do the same disservice. Teemu Ruskeepää (talk) 11:05, 12 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Groups?

Why are "Respiratory infections" group B, but "Respiratory diseases" group D? Those seem as though they would be related? If not, they don't seem clear enough what the difference is. TheHYPO (talk) 05:18, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The divisions are those used by the WHO report from which the data is taken, so details might be found there. Generally infectious diseases are separated from non-infectious diseases. "Respiratory infections" is not group B, it is B.1 (and hence included in B "Infectious and parasitic diseases"). Group D are non-infectious respiratory diseases (not being included in group B), such as D.2, asthma. Similarly, "Diarrheal diseases" is B.3 (also under B as an infectious disease), and not included in F "Digestive diseases", etc. -R. S. Shaw (talk) 06:05, 3 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Complementary causes: Smoking, malnutrition, obesity etc

How about adding a second table with complementary or original causes? For example: Smoking may cause lung cancer, which in turn is the "real" cause of death. Malnutrition may cause dysenteria or easily avodiable diseases, where each of these I have seen estimates from WHO, FAO and The Lancet which places child deaths due to malnutrition between 10 million and 15 million per day depending on how you factor the causes. DanielDemaret (talk) 14:18, 17 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

CDC tells a different story!

I am not a coroner nor a medic, but though that table at the bottom was odd as septicemia is a big problem (MRSA and C difficile). The CDC website gives different groupings but the key points are different here. The source was taken from a website out to prove a point (we in the west die of different causes than in third world) which gets the data from a WHO poster where the groups are "europe" (former-soviet block + nordic countries) and the Americas surely that is not a good idea. 1 in 20 is TB? No Diabetics and Alzeimers? 1 in 20 deaths is "suicide"? --Squidonius (talk) 00:06, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Is HIV/AIDS Really A Cause of Death?

I ask this because HIV/AIDS, by nature, destroys the immune system, but not really anything else. HIV and AIDS do not directly cause death, however, due to the heavily impaired immune system, popportunistic infections can be the causation of death. Persons with HIV and AIDS have been known to suffer expiration resultant of the common cold. So is it really true to cite HIV / AIDS as a c.o.d.? ⒺⓋⒾⓁⒼⓄⒽⒶⓃ② ^talk 15:48, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. There's a clear causal connection. Of course, if I say "Would they have died if they didn't have AIDS?" then you could say "Would they have died if they hadn't taken the bus that morning?", but this is game-playing and is merely evasive from what is clearly true, that AIDS is the reason for these people's deaths. 68.239.78.65 (talk) 01:52, 24 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I would say that for practical purposes, AIDS related deaths should be classified as such. Classifying these deaths as "the cold" or "pneumonia" would just be more complicated for curious wikipedians who want to find these statistics quickly. Paxuniv (talk) 23:32, 19 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Starvation?

I found this on the "starvation" article, and it seems to me the numbers don't match up.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, more than 25,000 people died of starvation every day in 2003...

That would be 9,000,000 every year, more than the top causes listed here. Are the starvation deaths just split up or am I missing something else here? Paxuniv (talk) 23:39, 19 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I can believe the numbers don't match up; each are produced by different bureaucracies with different objectives (even though both are part of the UN).

9 million would be 15.8 % of the 57 million deaths in 2002, so group A and B are both bigger than that, whatever significance that has. There is the "Nutritional deficiencies" category with 0.8 %, but no starvation category otherwise it appears. Perhaps many get counted under other categories like infectious diseases and heart failure, and perhaps some aren't in any category or even tabulated in the totals. -R. S. Shaw (talk) 06:28, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Malnutrition is a classic problem of measuring the "underlying cause". Relatively few people die directly of starvation, but many more are helped along the way to dying of other things (particularly infections, such as TB) by being undernourished, especially young children. Underlying causes are generally not addressed in this list (except, arguably, HIV/AIDS). Other major underlying causes might include access to healthcare, obesity, poor sanitation, smoking, etc.

Data Misleading

The fact that the causes are broken up into subgroups seems to make the data misleading. For example, if 29.34% of deaths are caused by Cardiovascular Diseases, how can 12.64% of deaths be caused by Ischemic Heart Disease, which is a type of cardiovascular disease? It seems like the higher level categories (Cardiovascular Diseases) should be left off, or only include the percentages that are not included by other more specific entries (ie, "Other Cardiovascular Diseases"). David Mitchell (talk) 19:23, 8 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That would impose an arbitrary order on the list which is only governed by how fine each category is subdivided and not by the actual death rates. It would subvert the whole point of the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.187.126.130 (talk) 13:15, 9 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's only misleading if you can't read correctly.213.159.118.174 (talk) 10:55, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Request to add {{WPMED}} project banner to this talk page.

Thanks.

193.63.130.1 (talk) 11:56, 31 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

-- Added -- 201.37.230.43 (talk) 23:34, 16 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Color coding in charts

The use of colors for some categories in these charts and not others is quite confusing. ("Lower respiratory tract infections" is pink, "Tuberculosis" is blue, etc.) Could we please either very clearly indicate in the article what these colors mean or remove them altogether? Thanks. -- 201.37.230.43 (talk) 23:38, 16 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's supposed to denote causes that are in the top 10 of developed and developing countries alike. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 18:03, 17 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, that looks plausible. If anyone knows for sure, could this explanation please be clearly added to the article? -- 201.37.230.43 (talk) 05:06, 18 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Using a single colour would eliminate some confusion, although I think this would be better denoted with an asterisk than a coloured box. twirligig^{Leave one! ⋄ Check me out!} 17:04, 18 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Agree that the color coding is not terribly clear. But think that it is worth-while to in some way indicate items that appear in both charts (and in the lower chart, items that are in left and right charts).

Using one color would not make connection between left and right halves of bottom chart as clear.

Added a note to try to explain what the color means, until we come up with clearer way to connect items. Zodon (talk) 21:16, 14 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Where's influenza

Influenza on a normal year probably causes about one thousand deathss every day. Which makes it hard to understand the panic for 200 deaths over a couple months. Where is influenza ? B.1.1 or B.1.2 ? Or somewhere else? Why aren't the most deadly diseases of group B.1.1 mentioned? Many of them cause over 0,1% of all deaths 213.159.118.174 (talk) 08:25, 28 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]