Abstract
The cause of death of 603 diabetics between January 1972 and December 1973 in university hospitals, public hospitals and private hospitals, was studied and the following results were obtained.
1) Because these cases were obtained in three different types of hospitals, it is presumed that there may be a little bias than in previously published reports.
2) Of the 603 cases, 488 cases were primary diabetes.
Since autopsies were performed in only 81 cases, the rate of autopsy was found to be 13.4 per cent. Therefore, the classification of the cause of death is based upon the clinicai diagnosis when there was no autopsy.
3) It is of note that there were more deaths due to cerebrovascular accidens and fewer deaths due to neoplasms in private hospitals than in university hospitals.
On the other hand there were more cases of cardiac disease and diabetic coma in public hospitals, while in the university hospitals more deaths due to malignant neoplasm and fewer deaths due to cerebrovascular accident and diabetic coma were seen.
4) The leading causes of death were cerebrovascular accident (17.4%), renal disease (16.8%) and cardiac disease (16.8%), followed by malignant neoplasm (13.9%), infection (including tuberculosis)(12.7%) and diabetic coma (9.0%). Thus, the deaths from the cardiovascular disease including cardiac disease, renal disease and cerebrovascular accident made up about one half (51.8%) of the deaths among the diabetics.
