This is surprising:
Sudden deaths are often assumed to be caused by a failing heart. But about 17 per cent of deaths assumed to be caused by cardiac arrest may actually have resulted from drug overdose, according to a study in San Francisco. [NewScientist]
This despite there being no drug paraphernalia or other evidence of drug use to suggest that a post-mortem is in order. What to make of this?
The finding also questions the accuracy of other health statistics, says [Zian Tseng at the University of California, San Francisco, who headed the team that performed the autopsies]. “Without post-mortem confirmation, all causes of death on death certificates are just educated guesses,” he says. “Therefore, all aggregate mortality data reported by the CDC [and other health organisations] on cancer mortality, heart disease mortality, etc. should be taken with a grain of salt.”
Which puts health researchers in a harsh position. After all, autopsies are an expensive business, and unless robots can be trained to do them, they’ll remain expensive.
It suggests a lot of estimates may have to be redone, with big error bars.
