A study of multiple causes of death in California: 1955 and 1980.

Multiple cause of death patterns in California for 1980 were compared to a similar study of deaths conducted in 1955. Primary underlying causes of death changed, mainly reflecting the emergence of respiratory cancer as a major cause of death in 1980. The number of causes reported per death increased from 1955 to 1980, in all age and sex groups. Diseases of the arteries and pneumonia, which are among the most common underlying causes of death, appeared more often on death certificates in both 1955 and 1980 as contributing causes than as underlying the death. Diabetes was studied in detail in the 1955 report, and comparisons were made in 1980 to show increases in the proportions of deaths with this disease and corresponding increases in its prevalence among the living population from the National Health Survey. Multiple cause of death data can provide further information on the prevalence of a fatal disease in a population and its relative role in contributing to mortality, and can also provide new information on diseases that contribute to deaths, which was not previously available in population-based studies of single cause of death.