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Cause of Death
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I thought a different way to approach a discussion of
health and how to maintain it was to start with its opposite of disease
and death. Lets identify the leading causes of death and disease
and then discuss what we can do about it.
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In one sense death can be thought of as the ultimate
disease. There are other diseases that cause severe morbidity
(disease - lack of health) but
little mortality (death). Many times they are related. In
other
cases, they may be entirely separate.
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The first table is the 15 leading causes of death in the
US in 2004. The second table is the same but broken down by age.
The 3rd diagram is a graphical comparison of death rates of
cancer and heart disease broken down by two age groups - below age 85
and above age 85. We can look at each of the pictures in more
detail but basically I am going to work my way down the 1st table.
I will discuss morbidity in context.
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Heart disease is the
number one killer in the US for all ages combined. The two peaks
are 60 - 79 yrs and 80+ yrs.
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Cancer is the number 2 killer in the US causing 23% of
total deaths in 2004. The different cancers have different causes
and risk factors and therefore different preventive strategies.
Number one killer for both men and women is lung cancer. Number two for men and
women is prostate cancer and breast cancer, respectively.
Number 3 is the same for men and women and is colon cancer.
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A second tier of cancer killers are pancreas, leukemia,
and ovarian cancer. The rest
of cancers have smaller numbers of deaths and are of less significance
for that fact.
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The number 3 cause of death after cancer is cerebral vascular disease.
Many of the risk factors and preventative measures are similar
for heart disease but are worth repeating.
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Chronic lower respiratory
diseases (lung diseases) is
number 4 cause of death with 121,987 deaths in 2004 or 5.1% of total
deaths. Much of this is preventable.
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Accidents at number 5, is a much harder topic to deal
with as it is quite varied.
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Number 6 is Diabetes Mellitus
which is a devastating
disease with markedly rising incidence and significant morbidity as
wwll as mortality.
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Alzheimer Disease is the
last cause of death I will
discuss. It is also on the rise but it causes more fear that it
actual numbers would support.
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Oriented for medical professionals but very up to date
complete resource
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Good reference for almost anyone
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| Newsweek 2008 - Cancer Prevention |
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Lots of information and database references
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| Cancer screening for the most part, has not achieved the expected benefits many times causing more harm than good.
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