Comment by hinkley
13 hours ago
Sort of at the opposite end, I knew a PT who harped on balance exercises and pointed out that a lot of old people have pneumonia as cause of death on their death certificate. The pneumonia was often acquired while immobilized by a broken hip. The broken hip was caused by falling (+ lower body atrophy), so really these people died from falling. It just took a while.
I don’t know what the right answer is for coding death certificates. Maybe the correct answer is to record several so we can see comorbidities and contributing factors more easily when deciding what science to fund, charities to endow, and which treatments to disfavor.
Died of complications of cancer, reaction to chemo. Died of complications of hip fracture, pneumonia.
A relative of mine was dying of stage 4 lung cancer and after they were admitted to the hospital, they contracted COVID and passed away two weeks later.
Their life expectancy upon admission was estimated to be less than a year, so it's hard to pin this on just the pandemic.
Personally I would put "smoking" in the form, because truth be told that was the single largest contributing factor.