Women’s All Causes Death and Alzheimer’s Disease: An Editorial

Michael Naafs, A. B.

Department of Medicine, Naafs International Health Consultancy, Netherlands

Dr. Michael Naafs, A. B., Department of Medicine, Naafs International Health Consultancy, Netherlands.

Keywords: Alzheimer’s Disease; Multiple Sclerosis; Dementia Syndrome

Abstract

Recently, Dutch people were told by their newspapers, they die now from completely different causes, then 5 years ago. For Dutch women the dementia syndrome, including Alzheimer’s disease, is now the number one cause of death since 2013.This shift in death causes is raised by the introduction of the IRIS automated coding system of death certificates, implementing the ICD-10 codes, as released by the WHO in 1993. The IRIS coding system has a preference for neurodegenerative diseases above infectious diseases. The IRIS coding system is discussed, its consequences for interpreting death statistics and prevalence rates of eg Alzheimer’s disease based on death certificates. The unexplained differences in U.S-Dutch death statistics, using the same IRIS coding system are considered. The inter and intra-coder variability is discussed, as well as up-coming new machine-learning techniques and rule based methods for automated death certificate coding.

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