Vital Events Reference Tables 2011

Section 6: Deaths - Causes

Information about the basis of these statistics is available from the Vital Events – General Background Information  and the Deaths – Background Information  pages of this website. For example, notes on the lists of causes of death and the definition of ‘years of life lost’ are available via the latter page.

Changes in the coding of causes of death between 2010 and 2011

Care is required when comparing these statistics for 2011 with the figures for earlier years. This is because, at the start of 2011, we upgraded our coding software to take account of a number of updates that the World Health Organisation had made to the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, Tenth Revision (ICD-10). This was announced when we published the figures for the first quarter of 2011 (News Release 9 June 2011) and again when we published the preliminary figures for 2011 as a whole (News Release 8 March 2012).

The overall scale of change is small: for Scotland as a whole, we estimated that about 2% of deaths would get a cause of death code in a different chapter of ICD-10 from the one that would have applied previously. However, the scale varies between causes of death: it represents a larger percentage for some and has very little or no effect on others. Further details are available on the Deaths Certificates and Coding the Cause of Death page of this website. 

The biggest single change is in how ‘drug abuse’ deaths from ‘acute intoxication’ are coded. Examples of such cases are people who were known or suspected habitual drug abusers, for whom the cause of death was certified as ‘adverse effects of heroin’, ‘methadone toxicity’ or ‘morphine intoxication’. Under the old coding rules, if the overdose was accidental or of undermined intent, the underlying cause of death was classified as ‘mental and behavioural disorders due to use of opioids’. Under the new coding rules, they are counted under ‘accidental poisoning… ‘ or ‘poisoning…, undetermined intent’, whichever is appropriate. How deliberate drug deaths are classified has not changed: they are counted under intentional self-harm or, if appropriate, assault. Because ‘undetermined intent’ deaths are included in the figures for probable suicides, we have therefore estimated what those figures for 2011 would have been, had the data been coded using the old rules. More information about this is available from the probable suicides section on this website. 

Tables 

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