Talk:Preventable causes of death

New Updated 2013 Medical Mistake Data

The medical mistake data is 14 YEARS OLD?! Time for an update.

Here is a nice PEER REVIEWED September 2013 data. "Between 210,000 and 440,000 patients each year die from medical mistakes."

http://journals.lww.com/journalpatientsafety/Fulltext/2013/09000/A_New,_Evidence_based_Estimate_of_Patient_Harms.2.aspx

That would make it somewhere between #1 and #2 now.

Since the smoking data is 10 YEARS old, and smoking has continues to go down dramatically, Medical Mistakes tops the chart now. the others can easily be updated as well. I'll do that next. The charts are woefully out of date too. I'm on it.

Darrellx (talk) 02:07, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Inactive lifestyle

What is the difference really between death caused by inactive lifestyle and obesity/being overweight? I thought the former contributes to the latter, in most cases and that's usually what kills you. In cases where people are dying from leading in inactive lifestyle, are they also people who are NOT overweight/obese and/or have a healthy diet, but exercise little or not at all? The snare (talk) 10:53, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Sorry I messed Up

Hey I tried to change the picture caption on causes of death worldwide by children, it should say causes of death by injury as per the data from the cited source. Now the picture won't show up anymore. my bad.

Edit 2: FIxED IT! yeah

Ref

This is a good ref Lopez AD, Mathers CD, Ezzati M, Jamison DT, Murray CJ (2006). "Global and regional burden of disease and risk factors, 2001: systematic analysis of population health data". Lancet. 367 (9524): 1747–57. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(06)68770-9. PMID 16731270. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) --Doc James (talk) 19:00, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Rename/delete?

I don't really say this often, but I think this article adds nothing to Wikipedia.

It is based in its entirety on a single article published in 2000, which it reproduces in newspaper style - all qualifying statements are removed, specialist terminology carefully explained in the paper is replaced by incorrectly-applied general terminology, and a political agenda thickly smeared over the whole thing (this is partly the paper's fault).

• "Cause of death" is a medico-legal term relevant, mostly, to death certificates. In most jurisdiction, it must never refer to a risk factor: a doctor listing "smoking" as cause of death would be seen as incorrectly filling out a certificate. There is a list of those on the second page of the paper. The paper uses the term "actual cause of death", which is emotive and permissible in a research paper, but has not caught on and has not become neutral.
• The data is for the US only, and, to be fair, quite poor. It's always a bit unhealthy to go back to public health advice, which errs on the side of caution, to generate new research. It also seems, frankly, odd to try to measure risk factors in number of deaths rather than life-years lost, and I believe this will make it very difficult to ever find comparable international research.
• Some joker decided that "overweight and obesity" is the same as "poor diet and physical inactivity". That's just not true, and I believe there's an emerging consensus that it's focussing on precisely the wrong risk factors (lack of exercise, lack of fibre in the diet, and failure to include sufficient fruit/non-starchy vegetable components in the diet are clearly modifiable, and modification appears to have positive effects).
• The (journal) article has been "corrected" (though I believe it is more proper to say a large number of errors in it has been discovered and we shouldn't rely on known-faulty primary research at all), and from the references, it seems we haven't followed that.
• The (journal) article seems to me to be highly questionable in its approach of lumping together diet and exercise levels in the first place. Indeed, I must admit I have strong suspicions, given the overly strongly worded conclusion, that there was a specific motivation to define categories that would show up above smoking in a future list, if current trends continue.

In short, this is by no means the rare exception of primary published research that an encyclopedia article can be based on: it's the common case: rough, dirty, somewhat error-ridden primary research that provides a "first stab" quality of numbers, needs discussion, weighting against similar research, and, in general, a very good secondary author before anything usable comes out of it.

In the absense of that, all we can do is point to the WHO, which I'm sure produces similar statistics.

Again, I do not see any way to salvage any of the current article text under the current article title: Modifiable risk factors for mortality in the United States might be a place to stash this until one future day when someone's actually willing to look at the data, and there's nothing wrong with the article title, but the gap between a single short paper with known errors covering only the United States on the one hand and, on the other, the sweeping claim to discuss "preventable causes of death" on the other is just too great for anything useful to happen here.

Regardless of the above, the "leading" in the article title is pointless and unnecessary: WP deals with notable subjects, and it is implicit that only the most notable causes would get explicit treatment in an article entitled, correctly, preventable causes of death.

RandomP (talk) 14:45, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

A few comments. First this is preventative health. Knowing what the leading causes are helps one develop policies about prevention. Knowing that CV disease and cancer are the two leading causes of death doesn't deal directly with prevention.

If you read the 2001 paper the section on diet and exercise actually quotes research on obesity and overweight.

Have added info about world wide prevalence.

Agree changing the name to Preventable causes of death is a good idea.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 11:27, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Is this article to be a list, or an article? So far it seems to be mostly a list, and categorization and listing on death template both indicate that also.

• If it is to be a list, then adding List of to the tile would help clarify the status.
• If not, categorization and listing on the templates should be changed.

I think it might be better as a list - the criteria for lists are a little different than articles (and the concept here seems to lend itself more easily to a list type treatment). Otherwise it seems a bit unclear in focus, since at least in theory almost any cause of death is preventable (e.g., by introduction of another cause of death.) As an article how does one distinguish this topic from Prevention (medical), e.g. many conditions cause morbidity as well as mortality. While the latter result is typically regarded as more serious, is there a clear enough dividing line to distinguish this concept as an article topic. Zodon (talk) 23:21, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

It is mostly a list so I guess we should move it.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:23, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Suicide?

Why is there no mention of suicide in these figures? It's not like suicide is not at all preventable. Trumpy (talk) 11:07, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Do not think it is in the top. Find a ref if it is.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:40, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

In the USA it is, ref: the CDC 2011 data http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr61/nvsr61_06.pdf (which is the latest year)

Firearms deaths per 2011 CDC report

accidental firearm deaths 851

firearm homicides 11,101

firearm suicide 19,766

firearm undetermined 222

total USA firearm deaths 31,940

SaltyBoatr ^{get wet} 17:15, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Firearm deaths should not even be listed as a "leading cause of death. It should be categorized as Homicide or Suicide. Firearms are an innate object. If we want to get specific, the actual cause of death would be a bullet. phpseocraft (talk) 17 September 2013 —Preceding undated comment added 21:41, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

2004 data

http://www.who.int/healthinfo/global_burden_disease/2004_report_update/en/index.html Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:56, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

2009 data

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2009/health_risks_report_20091027/en/index.html Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:39, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Causes of death by country income

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs310/en/index.html Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:43, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Questioning the details - consistency between Wiki articles.

How does "Heart Disease" stack up against these other statistics? I know this is as of 2001, but the article on cardiovascular disease http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_disease#Research mentions in the second paragraph that "Cardiovascular diseases remain the biggest cause of deaths worldwide, though over the last two decades, cardiovascular mortality rates have declined in many high-income countries. At the same time cardiovascular deaths and disease have increased at an astonishingly fast rate in low- and middle-income countries." When, if at all, was there a change between "hypertension" and "heart disease" becoming the highest cause of mortality? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.42.20.66 (talk) 14:53, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Hypertension?

According to our article on Hypertension, (specifically, this section) "preventable" factors seem to play a rather minor role in hypertension. --Dweller (talk) 20:04, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

"Preventable causes of death" are not the same as "causes of preventable death". Hypertension, tobacco smoking, high cholesterol, etc. are not "causes of death", at least not in the medico-legal sense in the UK. Therefore these "diagnoses" cannot be "preventable causes of death". By using a different definition for "preventable death", they could arguably be considered "causes of preventable death". The question is: does the phrase "preventable causes of death" refer to the medico-legal definition of "causes of death"? Axl ¤ [Talk] 20:44, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Not sure what you mean. Smoking tobacco is preventable, and it causes death by various diseases. Hypertension seems to be mostly the result of bad luck. How is that "preventable"? --Dweller (talk) 21:01, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

In the UK, "cause of death" has a medico-legal definition. By this definition, "tobacco smoking" is not a "cause of death". Neither is "hypertension". Therefore by extension, "tobacco smoking" cannot be a "preventable cause of death" because it isn't a "cause of death". Axl ¤ [Talk] 21:55, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

I have no idea how that is supposed to help answer my question. It seems to be a similar, but different question, rather than an answer. Are you trying to ask a new question or answer mine? --Dweller (talk) 08:08, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

You haven't asked a question in this section. Regarding your question here, the answer is yes, death from hypertension is preventable. However that question is only indirectly related to this article. This article's title, "List of preventable causes of death" is potentially ambiguous. One reference uses the phrase "preventable causes of death": here. Oddly, no author is listed and very limited information is given on Pubmed about the paper. I am not convinced that this is a WP:MEDRS-compliant source. So my questions: what is a "preventable cause of death"? What is the relationship between this and the medico-legal definition of "cause of death"? Axl ¤ [Talk] 10:02, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

That's a much bigger question. Sounds like you're considering an AfD. Are you saying that hypertension is a preventable cause of death because it's treatable? What about all those diseases and cancers that are treatable if caught early? A simple understanding of "preventable" means that the person brought the condition on themselves or was caused by some other non-medical human interaction or lack of action (like giving them food), which seems to fit most or all of the conditions in the article... except hypertension. --Dweller (talk) 12:53, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

"Sounds like you're considering an AfD."

I did indeed consider that, but I think that a better solution would be to rename the article to "List of causes of preventable deaths".

"Are you saying that hypertension is a preventable cause of death because it's treatable?"

I never said that hypertension is a preventable cause of death. Indeed my point is that the phrase "preventable cause of death" is ambiguous. Hypertension leads to deaths because it is a risk factor for stroke and ischaemic heart disease. Treatment of hypertension brings the risk of these fatal complications down.

"What about all those diseases and cancers that are treatable if caught early?"

What about them indeed? Are they "preventable causes of death"? Are they "causes of preventable deaths"? This should be determined by WP:MEDRS-compliant sources. Axl ¤ [Talk] 19:58, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the thorough responses. I'm extremely confused. I still don't get what the difference in the word order would make, but I'm reassured that your expertise means it does make a difference. On the hypertension point, its inclusion gives the impression that every death caused by hypertension could have been prevented by treatment, but I'm not sure that's true, whereas a death caused by smoking could have been avoided if tobacco didn't exist. On the cancer point, I don't think it matters which way you word it (although I refer back to the beginning of this post!) - either way, that death was preventable. Also, while I'm here, I just don't believe that more kids aged 9-18 die each year of "toxins" than due a cause that's not an injury, say, infectious and parasitic diseases, which this article also implies in this section. I think the article is just a real mess and AfD might be appropriate. --Dweller (talk) 09:41, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

I think that there is potentially useful information in this article, but it needs clean-up. The first step is to define the scope of the article/list. This requires a WP:MEDRS-compliant source to define the meaning of "preventable deaths" (or whichever phrase is the most appropriate). Axl ¤ [Talk] 13:43, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

"Percent of total" column seems mathematically inaccurate

What is the total that these are percentages of? Reversing the calculation for several columns gives different answers:

Cause	Number	Percent of total	Calculated total
Preventable medical errors in hospitals	210,000 to 448,000	23.1%	909,091 to 1,939,394
Smoking tobacco	435,000	18.1%	2,403,314
Being overweight and obesity	111,909	4.6%	2,432,804
Alcohol	435,000	18.1%	2,428,571

Presumably this is because different rows reflect data from different studies and years where the total was different. Should the percent of total column be recalculated to indicate a consistent total, or should there be a normalized total? As it stands, the numbers are somewhat misleading.

Jonbauman (talk) 19:45, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

Percent of total is meaningless without a total. That column should go. Rathfelder (talk) 22:07, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

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