[Statistics and causes of mortality in type-2 diabetes]

To establish the causes of mortality in people with type-2 diabetes and check the reliability of official records.

Cross-sectional, descriptive study.

Urban health centre with a population which has aged and is depressed socially and economically.

Randomised sample of 120 deceased patients with type-2 diabetes, extracted from the total number of deceased patients with type-2 diabetes on the centre's lists over the last five years.

Personal details, clinical data and clinical cause of death were gathered from the history. Then the clinical cause of death recorded in the Civil Registry was obtained.

The main cause of death is neoplasm (25.8%), but if we group the cardiovascular causes they add up to 47.4% of the total. According to official statistics, cardiovascular disease only occasioned death in 35% of cases. There was 61.7% overall concordance between the clinical cause and the official cause in the Civil Registry. There was close concordance only in the case of neoplasms (kappa = 0.84).

We found in our study that the main cause of death in type-2 diabetics was cardiovascular disease (47.7%), while in the Civil Registry mortality for this reason is clearly lower, which leads us to question the validity of the official statistics. This suggests we should insist even more on the importance of monitoring cardiovascular risk factors.