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.

I am very interested in family history and look at a lot of death certificates. Old age has been given on death certificates as long as there have been death certificates. Although "old" in 1837 terms is not the same as old almost 200 years later. As a woman in the 1840s, given the risks of infant mortality, lack of maternity care and repeated pregnancies, you'd be doing well to get to 55.

The most unusual cause I've seen is "internal complaint". I'm taking that to me "no obvious injuries or acute illness but i'm buggered if I know what killed this one".

My dad died last month. He was 92. His death certificate said "extreme frailty of old age". It's spot on.

@SaturdayRocks

I remember reading somewhere once that the most common cause of death is old age.

That's definitely not the case - even in old age! www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/causesofdeath/articles/leadingcausesofdeathuk/2001to2018

Internal complaint sounds very polite, I'd love to have that on my death certificate !

Thanks all for posting your experiences/points of view. It has been really interesting to read them all.

I’m a HCP, you don’t die of old age, you die because of health problems which occur because you are old, some of which might not have even been diagnosed, but OP is right, it’s not like you you hit a magic number of age and this causes your body to just stop working, like you have a preset expiry date. There is always a cause of death, like cardiac arrest for example, even if we don’t know what it is. I’ve seen many death certificates and never seen old age as a cause of death, so this is quite unusual, I’d like to actually see the death certificate and what was written.

death certificates having a cause of death are or where an aid to see what people are dying from, this can be used for statistics and health care

@Elsiebear90 i am hcp in primary care. Old age is a common cause of death on death certificates in the community. If aged over 80 and no obvious cause it is acceptable to the coroner.

Human cells can only replicate a certain number of times, things deteriorate and decay. There is not always one single obvious disease process that leads to an elderly person’s death.

People don't die of old age, that's not an acceptable cause of death. They will die of a direct cause (e.g. stroke) with underlying causes (e.g. hypertension and diabetes). This is recorded on the death certificate. A death certificate with old age recorded as a cause would be considered misreporting cause of death

That is not true. GPs are discouraged from putting old age as the main cause of death (I am a GP), but it is not misreporting. In this case, I am sure the cause was discussed with the local coroner, and this wording was agreed as appropriate.

Only about 50% of death certificates are accurate anyway. When patients have autopsies (a small minority of total deaths), the doctors' presumed cause of death turns out to be wrong half the time. I don't mean wrong in the sense that doctor has put 'stroke' and the autopsy shows the patient was actually murdered with an ice-pick... But if, say, a patient with known cardiovascular disease and angina is found dead in bed, the doctor might put 'myocardial infarction' (heart attack) on the death certificate (after discussion with the coroner if the death was unexpected or if the doctor had not seen the patient recently) but the real cause might be a stroke - also caused by the cardiovascular disease. Unless we autopsy everyone, a cause of death will always be a 'best guess' in most cases.

@RaspberryCoulis I sat in an archive looking through Halford parish burial registers where the helpful vicar had inserted a cause of death for many of the members of his congregation buried between 1820-1840 (so prior to death certificates being available) it was very interesting reading. A few had died of "to much of the tipple" others had cancer listed, this surprised me that they would have known. There were other causes, it made for interesting reading

@Elsiebear90

I’m a HCP, you don’t die of old age, you die because of health problems which occur because you are old, some of which might not have even been diagnosed, but OP is right, it’s not like you you hit a magic number of age and this causes your body to just stop working, like you have a preset expiry date. There is always a cause of death, like cardiac arrest for example, even if we don’t know what it is. I’ve seen many death certificates and never seen old age as a cause of death, so this is quite unusual, I’d like to actually see the death certificate and what was written.

I guess you have never written a death certificate? Cardiac arrest is absolutely not a cause of death. It is a mechanism of death and would be totally unacceptable on a death certificate. The correct cause would be whatever caused the heart to stop in the first place, e.g. myocardial infarction/stroke/cancer etc.

Frailty is not synonymous with old age, you can be frail without being old and you can be old without being frail. That being said it’s highly likely someone close to 100 would be frail, because it would be very unusual to live to that age without having any health problems and with no significant loss of fitness, we also know he had recent treatment for a heart condition, so he did have some health problems. Frailty is a combination of loss of fitness and the effects of multiple long term conditions, it’s not just someone being old. It may be that this was the cause, but the media has latched on to “old age” and ignored the “frailty”.

MissLucyEyelesbarrow

will the best guess still be valid for statistics though? near enough to give a decent picture of why the population is dying and act on this appropriately

@burritofan

How does this affect you, OP?

Hate to break it to you, burritofan, but death affects everyone, eventually.

When you do family research you become skilled at reading between the lines. My gg grandfather's 1880s death certificate (he was only about 44) says "cerebral softening, 6 months duration". After a bit of googling, and a chat with a GP friend, it seems that the most likely cause of death was advanced syphilis. I would imagine that in the 1880s anyone would know that cerebral softening not as a consequence of a head trauma would be syphilis, but it takes a bit of digging. Probably done to protect his widow, and toddler child (both of whom lived a long and healthy life, and didn't appear to contract the syphilis from him).

My grandfather death certificate says old age and advanced Parkinson’s, He was 97.
The Parkinson’s wasn’t the direct cause of death but it was a contributing factor, he passed away peacefully in his sleep with not much warning, he wasn’t ill as such and it was bit of a shock.

My dad died at 64 of early onset dementia, he died of aspiration pneumonia after he inhaled some food. He hasn’t seen a dr in ages but they didn’t need to do a post-mortem as the hospital were happy with the explanation of his death. They could see the food on the X-ray and we knew within hours of his admission that he wasn’t coming home.

@MissLucyEyelesbarrow no I do not write death certificates (never claimed I did) of course there is a cause for the cardiac arrest (an underlying condition), but that is what has caused the patient to die, not old age.

“That” meaning they died because they had an underlying condition which resulted in a cardiac arrest, not just because “they are old”.

Yes, 100% normal - regularly seeing a doctor for various health issues and over 80. We're all slowly dying you know, just a cheery thought for early in the morning if you don't die of one thing or another, old age gets you...

@ivykaty44

MissLucyEyelesbarrow

will the best guess still be valid for statistics though? near enough to give a decent picture of why the population is dying and act on this appropriately

You would hope that the best guesses even out - so for every guess of stroke when it's really MI, there is a matching guess of MI when it's really stroke.

But the only truly reliable mortality data comes from autopsy and even that has its limitations - for example, older people are less likely to be autopsied (as a percentage of deaths within that age cohort) because their deaths are less often unexpected, so less often referred to the coroner, triggering an autopsy.

I think the push against putting old age on certificates is daft because it pushes GPs to guess a more specific cause when, in all honesty, we don't know. We would have better data if we allowed doctors only to put specific causes like MI when there was a really good reason for doing so, e.g. patient had complained of chest pain the day before.

To reassure people, though, all unexpected deaths when the patient has not seen a doctor recently, or when the doctor cannot make an educated 'best guess' are referred to the coroner. We don't just wing it

Only about 50% of death certificates are accurate anyway. When patients have autopsies (a small minority of total deaths), the doctors' presumed cause of death turns out to be wrong half the time. I don't mean wrong in the sense that doctor has put 'stroke' and the autopsy shows the patient was actually murdered with an ice-pick...

😂😂🤣

In NZ they list multiples causes, my mum died of old age but it lists the three conditions she had which she only got just before she died.

YABU.

Think of it like his batteries running out.

My grandad had old age on his death certificate. He was 89 and just keeled over one day.