AIBU to question why they put "Died of old age" on Prince Philip's death certificate?

[SolarLightxoxo]

I mean everyone dies of something surely? It's not like you come to a certain age and you just drop dead.

There’s many articles on this, no single disease his body just declined and gave up, we don’t live forever and he was nearly 100.

He was 99.
It was probably many little things adding up.

Seems fair to me (you're allowed if they're over 80 and there's no single cause)

It's better than putting heart failure when he had a procedure a month before death - and the resulting intrusion into the doctors/hospital etc

It's not like you come to a certain age and you just drop dead

Errrm yes you do! If you make it to a certain age without any disease or illness your heart will eventually simply slow done then stop altogether. That’s ‘dying of old age’.

There literally is such a thing of getting so old your body dies of old age. Of course it just gives up with no specific cause.

DMIL had the same - she was 95. But had been fit to the end. But gradually frailer - do they need an autopsy to see which organ failed first? Don't see how they could assign it to one reason otherwise.

What would you like it to say?

We used to see old age as a cause of death onoads of death certificates, then I think the guidance changed and doctors were advised to be more specific.

Where someone is in their late 90s/early 100s, however, old age will be an accurate cause of death. Everything just stops working.

Yes you absolutely do get to a certain age and then drop dead. He was nearly 100. Eventually lots of different systems stop working properly, and the body can’t function properly. What age that is will vary for different people.

My mum died of old age. She needed a post mortem to ascertain death as she literally dropped down dead, his conclusion was old age as he could find nothing had gone medically wrong with her, she was 68.

Surely it’s just a case that the body eventually loses its ability to heal and regenerate?

How does this affect you, OP?

I would have liked my mum's death certificate to say that, as her body just basically stopped working due to old age. But they put stroke and heart condition etc on it. I think it's unusual for it to state old age as the reason.

I think it’s probably the best thing to die of.

It's not like you come to a certain age and you just drop dead.

So unless you catch a disease/develop an illness, you’ll live indefinitely?

@burritofan

How does this affect you, OP?

I don’t understand your

Ooops posted too soon!

I don’t understand that question: can people not wonder about things that don’t directly affect them?

The alternative would be to do invasive tests when an extremely old person deteriorates, or to do an autopsy.

I can’t see the problem, the man was nearly 100.

Mind boggling op

I’ve heard it all now....you don’t die of old age?!? 🤣

Well yeah, technically there's always a 'final cause' of death. But if you think about what aging actually is you can see it as a sort of accumulation of small errors - when cells copy themselves they don't do it perfectly, so over time more and more mistakes creep in, until finally the system is overwhelmed. In my layman's understanding that's what death from old age is. Some people age more slowly than others depending on the rate of cell replication and number and severity of the errors. Biologists feel free to correct if totally wrong.

My mils one says this too. She was 93.

Yep my Nan (died last year in Jan before COVID at 90) had it as the top cause of death on her certificate along with a number of other ailments (including from memory a couple of infections) that had her body not been so worn down due to age she would have survived.

They often put Old Age on death certs.

If you are 80 plus Old Age is accepted as a cause of death on a death certificate

@GlassBoxSpectacular

It's not like you come to a certain age and you just drop dead.

So unless you catch a disease/develop an illness, you’ll live indefinitely?

And naming a specific illness surely just sounds like something killed them that shouldn’t have? We should have caught it earlier, we should have fixed it, they shouldn’t have died...

We often see x or y people die from cancer / heart disease a day / week / year in the U.K. stats and generally presented as a BAD NUMBER that we want to see coming down. For these numbers to ever even be remotely meaningful you’ve got to have another option surely - died of old age?