How People Die

The other day I was randomly wondering how many people die every year from slipping in the shower. Figuring that the answer must be available on the internet somewhere I went in search. Well, I didn’t find exactly what I was looking for, but thanks to the NCHS (.pdf) I found a bunch of equally interesting stuff.

The number one killer of the 2,442,923 Americans who died in 2003 was cardiovascular disease, which took 901,753 souls. Cancer was a distant second, at 554,643. Diabetes killed another 73,965. Those numbers, I think, are indicative of our aging population. Young people don’t generally die from those diseases, and when you’re old the likelihood that your death will be due to something else is pretty low.

In 2003, 44,059 people were killed by motor vehicles - 26,963 more than the 17,096 people who were murdered (67.8% of which - 11,599 - were killed by guns). I think the number of gun homicides is interesting in light of the number of people killed by accidental falls (all falls, not just falls in the shower) - 16,926.

And who knew that 2,766 people died from complications in surgery? Yikes!