FLORIDA VITAL STATISTICS ANNUAL REPORT 2013
x
CAUSE OF DEATH:
The underlying cause of death is determined from death certificate medical information in accordance with
procedures established by the World Health Organization (WHO) and NCHS. Standardized codes are assigned
from the International Classification of Diseases (ICD). To keep abreast of changes in medical knowledge, the
ICD is revised approximately every 10 to 15 years. Revisions and years used in Florida are:
Revision Years Revision Years
Second ........................ 1917-1920 Seventh ........................ 1958-1967
Third .............................1921-1929 Eighth ........................... 1968-1978
Fourth .......................... 1930-1940 Ninth ............................. 1979-1998
Fifth ............................. 1941-1948 Tenth????????. 1999-Present
Sixth .............................1949-1957
Due to these revisions, some of which involve major changes, year-to-year comparisons of deaths by cause can
be misleading, unless such comparisons span a period of years in which only one revision was used, or in which
the changes from one revision to another were minor.
The Tenth Revision contains major modifications in many sections. Under the Tenth Revision, a disease category
such as ?pneumonia/influenza? may be redefined so that more or fewer deaths are included in that classification.
To permit more accurate comparisons, NCHS coded a sample of 1996 US deaths by both the Ninth and Tenth
Revision rules. The results were grouped by major causes and, for each of these; the number of Tenth Revision
deaths was divided by the number of Ninth Revision deaths to produce a comparability ratio. For example, the
comparability ratio for Malignant Neoplasm is 1.0068. This means the Tenth Revision coding of 10,000 death
certificates will produce about 68 more malignant neoplasms than the Ninth Revision coding would. The
comparability ratios for 113 selected causes of death and the 130 selected causes of infant death may be found in
the National Vital Statistics Report, Vol. 49, No. 2, May 18, 2001 available at
AGE-ADJUSTED DEATH RATE (AADR):
The Age-Adjusted Death Rate (AADR) is a summary rate of deaths that facilitates the comparability of rates for
areas or population subgroups with different age distributions. These rates are presented as per 1,000 or
100,000 population. The AADRs published in this report are the rates that would have been observed if the age-
specific death rates for the given year had prevailed in a population whose age distribution was the same as that
of the standard population. Through 1960 the population of the United States in 1940 was used as a standard for
computation of the AADRs using the direct method. For 1970 and forward, the projected
2000 standard million
population of the United States is used as a standard for computation of the AADRs using the direct method.
The specified age intervals are under 1, 1-4, 5-14, 15-24, 25-34, 35-44, 45-54, 55-64, 65-74, 75-84, and 85
years or older for the years 1970 through 2013.
COMPUTATIONS AND FOOTNOTES:
The following procedures and symbols are used throughout this report:
(1) All rates and ratios are rounded to the nearest tenth.
(2) Undefined/anomalous rates/ratios (those with denominators of zero) are printed as ??.?
(3) For 1990 and forward, Age-Adjusted Death Rates (AADRs) are standardized using the direct method of
standardization, to the US 2000 standard million population.
(4) "NA" is an abbreviation for not available.
