Computing exact excess death rates from a published mortality study.
We wish to estimate the associated excess death rate (EDR) or mortality ratio (MR) from a published study of persons with a given medical condition. This requires computation of the expected mortality in the study population. If age- and sex-specific person years of data are available, this task is straightforward. Most often, however, we have only descriptive statistics--percentage male, average and standard deviation of age--at the beginning of follow up. We show here how this limited information can be used to compute an exact EDR or other quantities of interest.
Shavelle
Robert M
RM
Life Expectancy Project, 1439 - 17th Ave, San Francisco, CA, USA. Shavelle@LifeExpectancy.com
Strauss
David J
DJ
Paculdo
David R
DR
D017677:Age Distribution; D004194:Disease; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009026:Mortality / Q000639:trends*; D011159:Population Surveillance; D014481:United States / Q000453:epidemiology