Reporting of Aspiration Pneumonia or Choking as a Cause of Death in Patients Who Died With Stroke

Background and Purpose—It is not known how many stroke patients die from fatal pulmonary complications such as aspiration pneumonia (AP) and choking each year in the United States. This study aimed to determine the frequency of reporting of AP or choking as a cause of death on death certificates with mention of stroke in the United States as a proxy measure of the incidence of dying from AP or choking among patients with stroke.

Methods—We used multiple-cause mortality data for the years 2001 to 2010 to identify death certificates with mention of stroke (International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision code I60–I69), AP (International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision code J69), and choking (International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision code W78–W80) for analysis. Read more