Mortality and Causes of Death in a National Sample of Diabetic Patients in Taiwan
Response to Tseng
- Tsung-Hsueh Lu, MD1,
- Pei-Yuen Hsu, MS2,
- Robert N. Anderson, PhD3 and
- Chien-Ning Huang, MD4
- 1Institute of Public Health, College of Medicine, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan
- 2Office of Statistics, Department of Health, Taipei, Taiwan
- 3Mortality Statistics Branch, Division of Vital Statistics, National Center for Health Statistics, Hyattsville, Maryland
- 4Department of Internal Medicine, Chung Shan Medical University Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan
- Address correspondence to Dr. Chien-Ning Huang, Department of Internal Medicine, Chung Shan Medical University Hospital, no. 110, Section 1, Chien Kuo North Road, Taichung, 402, Taiwan. E-mail: cshy049{at}csh.org.tw
Tseng’s study (1) indicated that only 19.8% of deaths among Taiwanese diabetic patients had an underlying cause of death attributed to cardiovascular disease (CVD), which was relatively low compared with the U.S. (49.4%) and U.K. (49.1%). One possible explanation was that Taiwanese diabetic patients were less likely to experience CVD than their counterparts in western countries. An Asia Pacific Collaboration cohort study did not support this hypothesis: no discernible differences were found between the hazard ratios for CVD deaths in Asian and Australasian populations (2).
The underlying cause of death is determined by a combination of factors, including both the physician’s …
