Coronary heart disease remains the most common underlying cause of death in Australia, being the main cause for men and the second most common (behind dementia) for women and, in total, connected with about 20 percent of all deaths. Dementia was the second highest as it contributed to 18 percent, followed by hypertension, cerebrovascular diseases, and diabetes. But new data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare paints a far more complex picture, revealing that 81 percent of deaths are due to more than one cause.
The data is from 2022 and it shows there were 190,939 deaths registered that year (99,924 males; 91,015 females). Less than 1 percent occurred among children aged 0–4 years, while over two-thirds (68 percent) were among people aged 75 and over. The data also shows that in that year, COVID-19 began to appear as a factor only in patients 65 and above, where it accounts for between 4 and 7 percent of fatalities depending on age bracket.
There were 9,859 deaths due to the coronavirus, accounting for 5.2 percent of total fatalities. While ischaemic heart diseases (restriction of blood flow to the heart; not a heart attack, though it can lead to one) has retained the top spot in leading causes of death over the years, dementia—now Australia’s second most common killer—didn’t make an appearance in the top five until the 2000s.
Those long-term conditions may not be what eventually kills the patient, but they contribute to the underlying cause (for ex.
