ABSTRACT
CAUSE OF DEATH REPORTING Even if immediate and underlying CODs are entered accurately according to these standards, important information is lost in the process that leads to the "leading causes of death" reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). [...]when regional vital statistics offices share death certificate data with the CDC, the CDC's computerized algorithm selects one diagnosis as the underlying COD, and this is the diagnosis that is reported in CDC mortality statistics.4 Other diagnoses appear in separate COD fields in mortality databases but in no particular order, and they are not included in the vast majority of mortality statistics. [...]in this example, the death might be attributed to cancer orto something else entirely. Another recent study of opioidrelated deaths among "cancer survivors" (which the authors did not explicitly define, but they cited an article that Included In Its definition Individuals with active disease and those with a more remote history of cancer) highlights the potential for loss of data on acute events when a serious Illness and an acute event coexist at the time of death.6 The authors found that decedents with opioid-related primary CODs were less likely to have a cancer diagnosis Included as a contributing COD than would be expected.