Cause of death
A disease, injury, or event that directly or indirectly results in a person’s death. It is distinguished from the mechanism by which death occurs.
Cause-of-death sequence: The ordered chain of conditions linking an initiating cause to death. Shows how an underlying condition, intermediate complications, and the immediate cause can form one causal pathway.
Medical certificate of cause of death: An official document recording the conditions and circumstances associated with a death. Physicians and other authorized certifiers use it to state the causal sequence.
Autopsy: A postmortem examination of a body to determine disease, injury, or cause of death. It can reveal an unsuspected condition or test a proposed explanation for death.
Mortality statistics: Numerical summaries of deaths in populations, often organized by age, place, or cause. Cause coding provides the categories used to count deaths from particular conditions.
Underlying cause of death: The disease or injury that initiated the chain of events leading directly to death. Identifies the starting point in a certified sequence, rather than its final complication.
International Classification of Diseases: The World Health Organization’s system for classifying diseases, injuries, and causes of death. Its codes make cause-of-death records comparable across places and time.
Sudden infant death syndrome: The sudden death of an infant under one year that remains unexplained after a thorough investigation. This diagnosis applies when investigations do not identify a specific cause.
Global Burden of Disease Study: A research program that estimates health loss and mortality across diseases, injuries, and risk factors. It combines cause-of-death data with other evidence to compare health burdens.
Immediate cause of death: The final disease, injury, or complication directly responsible for death. Names the last link in a sequence, which may differ from the condition that began it.
Death certificate: A government record documenting a person's death and associated legal and medical details. It carries the certified cause into vital statistics and administrative records.