For many years it has been fragmentarily reported that C.V.D. is the most important cause of death in Korea. The large number of unregistered deaths and poor autopsy rate have made the study of C.V.D. mortality and morbidity almost impossible.
Even though the registration is incomplete the Bureau of Statistics of Korea has been filing and coding all deaths registered by cause of death since 1958. Mortality trends for C.V.D. were observed by analyzing the data according to sex, age and the type of the disease. The death rates in this study merely show the pattern and the trends of the disease, not the actual level of the rate. A simple statistical technique was applied for smoothing of different registration rates of each year.
An attempt was also made to see whether hospitdata is applicable to the morbidity study of the diseases.
Following are some results of the study:
1. The death rates for C.V.D. increased 33.2% for 10 year period from 1958 to 1967. While the increase of the rate for males was 25.8%, the increase of death rate for females reached 46.8 %. The increase seemed to slow after 1964.
2. The increase was higher among younger ages in both sexes.
3. For the 10 year period, C.V.D. was the number one cause of death in the ages over 45.
4. Age specific death rates for C.V.D. showed an exponential increase with progressing age. The pattern of the age specific death rates for the 10 years showed little change.
5. Of all registered C.V.D. deaths in Seoul city, Kyunggi and Chungnam provinces, 64.7% of deaths were certified by a physician. Among 3,638 deaths certified by a physician in those areas, 94.5% were classified as cerebral hemorrhage and 5.1% as cerebral infarction. The reliability and the validity of the diagnosis of C.V.D. in death certificates seem to be extremely poor in this country.
6. For the 2 year period from 1967 to 1968, 291 records of C.V.D. patients were obtained from the medical record room of Severance Hospital. Among 291 patients of C.V.D. 38.1% were coded as cerebral hemorrhage, 26.1% as cerebral in23.0 % as subarachnoid hemorrhage and 12.8% as unclassified.
7. The validity of the diagnosis for the diseases was measured using criteria. The validity of the diagnosis of the disease was high-up to 91.4% but the validity of the diagnosis of the type of the disease was only 46.4%.
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