Changes in COPD Mortality for Older Age Group (45+ years): United States, 1983-1997

• Activity Number: 39
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Sunday, August 11, 2002 : 4:00 PM to 5:50 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics in Epidemiology*
• Author(s): Jay Kim*+ and Jai Choi
• Affiliation(s): Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Center for Health Statistics
• Keywords: COPD ; Mortality ; GIS ; Respiratory Disease

Abstract

In the analysis of mortality trends in diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (COPD), inclusion of a young population may mislead the true nature of the dynamics of the mortality rates. The fifteen-year data, for 1983-1997 from National Center for Health Statistics that obtains the resident death records from 50 states in United States of America, have been analyzed with emphasis on death rates among a population of 45 years of age and older, as this age group is most susceptive to this chronic disease. COPD was the fourth leading cause of death in 1998 and includes bronchitis, emphysema, asthma, and other airway obstructing diseases coded 490 through 496 in the International Classification of Diseases 9th Revision (ICD-9). We present the age-adjusted death rate for each of the 805 health service areas (HSAs) to magnify the high death rate areas such as coal mining and highly polluted areas. We found that the COPD death rates are steadily increasing for many HSAs during the three periods of 1983-1987, 1988-1992, and 1993-1997 among this population. The rate distribution and changes of rates will be mapped using GIS technique.