Cause of death (sorry a bit morbid. Maybe triggering)

[HelloDoggy]

Was reading that the queen's official cause of death was 'old age'. Which got me thinking - what is this? When someone old dies, what actually happens? I always assumed there was something which caused the death like a heart attack, cancer, malnutrition, or something. What does dying by 'old age' actually mean? Surely something in the body must have 'broken'/'stopped working'? Why isn't that something noted as the cause of death?

Age can't kill you surely. It must be the consequence of aging that kill you?

There's some interesting tweets from doctors saying they'd expect to be called up by the Medical Examiner if they put that on a death certificate and that it's not sufficient. Apparently 'frailty of old age' would be better and I can see that - i see a lot of very old patients who just don't have the reserves to get through one more infection.

I should imagine that her privacy is being protected. Which is actually not really OK. I think either release an accurate death certificate or don't release it.

I have seen it on a recently deceased relatives certificate, it was explained as us when we asked as them being old (late 90s) and having no serious diagnosis (no cancers, organ failures etc) and just their body giving up due to old age. We sort of expected something more formal looking on the certificate too!

My Nan lived to be 105 years. She did not have Dementia, Cancer, or any other health issues that often contribute to death. Her Death Certificate stated Old Age, what else was supposed to be reported?

That's really interesting. I guess there must just come a point when the body can't keep going. I just always assumed.it would be one specific part that gave up the ghost first, and that would be what's considered the cause of death. But maybe it's the mind that gives up, and that kind of sends signals to the body to say 'ok body, you can just shut down now, I'm ready to stop"?

Agree with Midnights, I think it's in the absence of a known medical issue then it is presumed to be an overall decline in physical health. No one is going to perform an autopsy for every elderly death to try to determine the cause. The human body basically wears out!

Age can obviously kill you, the body is not designed to live forever and if you haven’t had an obvious heart attack, cancer or some traumatic event then your death is likely to be some kind of age related heart failure, without the traumatic event of a cardiac arrest.
ie she didn’t feel too great, went to bed, was unusually sleepy and lethargic (blood not pumping enough around her body perhaps) and and fell asleep one final time and didn’t wake up again

I don't know! I think I just thought that something would have to be the ultimate cause. Like when you have a really old car - it's clearly not going to last forever, but there will be one thing which ultimately causes it's final demise - the battery dies or the door falls off and it's too old to be fixed.

My relative had just Alzheimer’s on her death certificate and the register had to get her book out to check it was allowed as she said you never just see that. Apparently it’s allowed after a certain age.

My Dad's death certificate had this. There was obviously some underlying cause for his death, but to find out when he was alive would possibly have caused some traumatic events for him, and when he died, we didn't want to have a post mortem just to find out.

The Queen may or may not have had an underlying cause for her death. It's none of our business whether she had or had not.

Was having this conversation with my elderly retired doctor father this evening. He said 'old age death' is a polite way of saying it. Essentially it means heart failure. Your organs shut down when you're dying. The heart is the last one.

God what have we come to when someone feels the need to say cause of death may be "triggering"

It's a fact of life!

I guess that makes sense, thanks. So maybe there is a cause but we don't know it because no.autopsy has been done, and it's enough to say 'old age'.

To be kind of blunt with it, your heart can just start slowing down and not working very well and then stop. A lot of elderly people don’t want to die in hospital so are made comfy at home. They said a lot about her having painful feet and she looked very frail so had lost her appetite. I think she just became very very frail, tired and her heart just stopped as she was so old

Thank you micey. That's helpful to know

It’s very common - I work in probate and see this all the time on death certificates. Saw one today actually!

The human body is finite. I think ultimately there comes a point where it is just worn out.

Maybe not cancer, dementia, stroke or heart failure etc, it's just accumulated years of wear of tear

They are protecting her privacy, you don’t die of old age, you die of something else , there is always a cause, but old age can hasten it or leave you unable to fight it. But old age is never the primary cause and it’s a rare situation it’s permitted, a 105 year old would be an exception;

she also didn’t go suddenly. They basically reported she was gravely Ill a few hours before they announced she was dead. So it was something else and they aren’t saying.

I don’t quite think it’s ok either, but it may have been her wish, especially if she’d been suffering from cancer or something. They did the same with Philip. And we know he didn’t just die of old age. The fact it’s on both certificates makes me think it was the queens wish

There will be a cause or (more likely) multiple causes. I would assume the doctor, being aware that it would be published was keeping her dignity a bit. It’s not inaccurate.

My mother’s death certificate also says “old age” . She was a decade younger than the Queen.

“Old age “ as cause of death does not mean heart failure.
Alzheimers disease is a terminal illness and is the cause of death for many people , including some younger folk .www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/dementia
According to the WHO dementia is the seventh leading cause of death around the world.
Old age is acceptable on a death certificate in Scotland as cause of death if the patient is over 80 and certain other criteria are met, including there being a general ongoing decline and no other discernible cause for the death.

It is definitely old age then with a car, sure you can keep mending buy when it it too old to fix then that is old age 😁 my micra had done 130k, engine fine, floor was falling apart and had been previously welded and just not worth it given the age and miles.

I thought the term used was natural causes. But I'm guessing her heart and body were worn out from age and just stopped working. 😞

You can totally die of old age and your organs just giving up. It's generally put down as heart failure, have seen this with at least 4 family members. Luckily we have good genetics and live into our nineties.

OP our bodies can’t go on for ever. Our cellular turnover slows, our bodies don’t heal or recover as well as they did, our organs start to shut down. And we die. Sometimes it really is the body slowly shutting down.

And my Mum also took time to die.
I don’t think they are covering something up. Elderly people can just fade away. My mother had moderate dementia but not severe, she’d had some strokes over the years, but she just ate less and less in the months leading to her death. She slept more, she very gradually became less present, even though she was her normal chatty self when awake, she would tire more easily. In the end she stopped eating. There was no one reason, just her body gradually deteriorating and winding down.