HC Deb 01 March 1999 vol 326 cc501-2W
Mr. Maclean

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will list the 20 most prevalent fatal illnesses in terms of annual death rates. [72713]

Ms Hewitt

[holding answer 24 February 1999]The information requested falls within the responsibility of the Director of the Office for National Statistics. I have asked him to reply.

Letter from Tim Holt to Mr. David Maclean, dated 1 March 1999: To ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will list the 20 most prevalent fatal illnesses in terms of annual death rates. The information requested is given in the attached table. The International Classification of Diseases (ICD) breaks down causes of death, disease and injury into 17 Chapters. It assigns different code numbers to different causes, thus providing a language-independent method of coding causes of death, injury and disease. Since many diseases have alternative names, the ICD system groups all synonymous terms for a particular condition under the one ICD code number assigned to the condition. We have avoided including in the ranking the ICD Chapter heading or diseases that cover too broad a range of codes e.g. malignant neoplasms (cancers) coded 140–208 are the most common cause of death, accounting for approximately 1 in 4 deaths in 1997. Rather than present this as a single cause we have broken it down into significant identifiable illnesses. The table presents diseases defined by either a group of codes or an individual code, depending on the disease e.g. ischaemic heart disease is coded 410–414, but female breast cancer is coded 174.

Crude death rates1 for the twenty most common causes of death in England and Wales, 1997
Rank Cause of death (ICD9 codes3) Rate per 100,000
All causes2 1,064
1 Ischaemic heart disease (410–414) 234
2 Cerebrovascular disease (430–438) 111
3 Pneumonia (480–486) 109
4 Malignant neoplasm of trachea, bronchus, and lung (162) 57
5 Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (490–496) 52
6 Malignant neoplasm of female breast (174) 445
7 Malignant neoplasm of prostate (185) 533
8 Malignant neoplasm of colon (153) 20
9 Malignant neoplasm of lymphatic and haematopoietic tissue (200–208) 19
10 Malignant neoplasm of ovary (183) 415
11 Senile and presenile organic psychotic conditions (290) 13
12 Malignant neoplasm of stomach (151) 13
13 Diabetes mellitus (250) 11
14 Malignant neoplasm of oesophagus (150) 11
15 Malignant neoplasm of pancreas (157) 11
16 Malignant neoplasm of rectum, rectosigmoid junction and anus (154) 9
17 Malignant neoplasm of bladder (188) 9
18 Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis (571) 8
19 Ulcer of stomach and duodenum (531–533) 8
20 Accidental falls (E880-E888) 7
1 Rates per 100,000 population
2 The death rate for 'all causes' includes deaths to those under 28 days old. Rates for individual causes of death do not.
3 International Classification of Diseases Ninth Revision
4 Per 100,000 female population
5 Per 100,000 male population

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