NOTES


IN THIS ISSUE

This publication presents statistics on the number of deaths for year of registration by state or territory of Australia, sex, selected age groups, and cause of death classified to the World Health Organisation's International Classification of Diseases (ICD). Version 10 of the ICD has been introduced from 1999.

Two Technical Notes are presented in this publication:

• Coroner Certified Deaths
• ABS Coding of Suicide Deaths

Users should read these technical notes in order to make themselves aware of changes in ABS processes which have had an impact on 2007 data.


CHANGES IN THIS ISSUE

The series of spreadsheets associated with this publication has been expanded from previous years. Additional data is now available as follows:

1. For all states and territories:

• underlying cause of death , by gender - 10 year time series
• 2007 underlying cause - standardised death rates and years of potential life lost
• 2007 selected causes by age at death, numbers and rates

2. Migrant data -causes of death information presented by country of birth . This includes information on leading causes of death and characteristics of death registrations.

In prior years, statistics on perinatal deaths have been included in this publication. However, for 2007 this data will be published as a separate publication, Perinatal Deaths, Australia (cat.no. 3304.0), which will be released in June 2009.


CAUSES OF DEATH REVISIONS

All coroner certified deaths registered after 1 January 2007 will be subject to a revision process. This is a change from previous years where all ABS processing of causes of death data for a particular reference period were finalised approximately 13 months after the end of the reference period. Where insufficient information was available to code a cause of death (e.g. a coroner certified death was yet to be finalised by the Coroner), less specific ICD-10 codes were assigned as required by the ICD-10 coding rules. The revision process will enable the use of additional information relating to coroner certified deaths as it becomes available over time. This will result in increased specificity of the assigned ICD-10 codes.

Causes of death data for 2007 coroner certified deaths will be updated as more information becomes available to the ABS. Revised data for 2007 will be published both on a year registration basis and a year of occurrence basis in the 2008 Causes of death publication, due to be released in March 2010, and again in the publication relating to the 2009 collection due for release in 2011. Revisions will only impact on coroner certified deaths, as further information becomes available to the ABS about the causes of these deaths.


INQUIRIES

For further information about these and related statistics, contact the National Information and Referral Service on 1300 135 070.


DATACUBES

Further information on Causes of Deaths 2007 is presented in the datacubes associated with this publication.