Journal of the Mississippi State Medical Association
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J Miss State Med Assoc · Oct 2003
Excess mortality due to diabetes in Mississippi and the estimated extent of underreporting on death certificates.
To develop alternative estimates of the excess mortality attributable to diabetes in Mississippi. ⋯ When reporting diabetes mortality numbers, public health agencies should consider reporting total registered diabetes deaths, not just registered underlying deaths. Better education of providers and others to increase the awareness of the importance of listing diabetes on the death certificate would help to increase concern and make diabetes a priority for public health action. Persons with diabetes have higher mortality rates and excess premature mortality, and diabetes ranks consistently among the leading causes of death in Mississippi and the U.S. Yet it has long been known that mortality attributable to diabetes is underestimated. Cause-of-death statistics are unreliable due to underreporting of diabetes on death certificates, and estimates based on attributable risk calculations do not take into account competing risks for mortality. In view of the public health importance of diabetes, it would be useful to develop alternative estimates of the burden of excess mortality attributable to it. In this paper I estimate the excess mortality attributable to diabetes for the diabetic population of Mississippi using epidemiologic data on the prevalence of diabetes and the relative risk of mortality among persons with diabetes.