INTRODUCTION
This publication contains summary information on causes of death for all doctor certified deaths for Australia. Doctor certified deaths account for 87.0% of all deaths registered in 2008. The remainder are reported to, and certified by, a coroner.
Causes of death for all deaths in 2008, whether doctor or coroner certified, will be published in Causes of Death, Australia, 2008 (cat. no. 3303.0), due to be released in March 2010. All coroner certified deaths registered after 1 January 2007 are subject to a revision of their ICD-10 codes should more information become available over time which would improve the quality of the allocated code. Further information on the revision process and the new dissemination strategy is provided in the Explanatory Notes 3-5.
The proportion of deaths certified by a doctor varies according to cause of death. For example, deaths classified to Chapter XVIII Ill Defined Causes and Chapter XX External causes, have a much lower proportion of deaths certified by doctors. In 2008, doctor certified deaths classified to these chapters accounted for only 0.3% and 1.1% of total deaths, respectively (see Table 1 in the Underlying Causes of Death Section). Given the low number of doctor certified deaths for these particular causes, they are not presented in detail in this publication. However, the information will be available in the March 2010 release of Causes of Death, Australia, 2008 (cat. no. 3303.0) which will provide causes of death for all deaths in 2008.
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