Multiple causes of death
Usually, statistics about how people die are based on the initiating or ‘underlying’ cause of death (see Cause of death terminology). But medical death certificates contain other information that can be useful in understanding why a death occurred. For example, while the underlying cause of death for a person might be coronary heart disease, the death certificate might also record the health condition that led directly to death (such as acute myocardial infarction) referred to as ‘direct’ causes of death in this section on multiple causes of death. Other conditions that significantly contributed to the death such as diabetes, alcohol use disorders and other contextual factors (referred to here as ‘contributory’ causes) may also be recorded on the death certificate.
Consideration of all these cause types (underlying, direct, and contributory) is referred to as ‘multiple’ causes of death (see Cause of death terminology). Assessment of multiple causes of death offers greater insight to understanding why Australians die to help inform health services and decision-makers to develop strategies to reduce the impact of diseases and promote better health.
Analysis of multiple causes of death necessitates a more detailed disaggregation of causes of death than that used when looking at the leading underlying causes of death only. This is to enable identification of causes that aren’t typically recorded as an underlying cause (such as risk factor related conditions) and specific conditions such as heart failure and frailty which would usually be grouped as ill-defined causes of death. As such there are some minor differences in the cause list and classification of diseases used in this section compared to previous sections on leading causes of death. See Technical notes for more detail.
The short video below explains how diseases, conditions, and health events are recorded on a death certificate, and how this information is translated for statistical purposes.
For a detailed description of how events that cause death are reported (certified) in Australia and translated into data, see Where do cause of death statistics come from? in the report What do Australians die from?