Analysis of the medical causes of death in cerebral palsy

To investigate causes of death and age at death in cerebral palsy subjects compared with the general population.

Analysis of data supplied by the centre of epidemiology on the medical causes of death within the National Institute of Health and Medical Research in France was conducted. Three thousand and thirty-one death certificates indicating a diagnosis of cerebral palsy (ICD-10 code G80) were reported between 2000 and 2008.

Median age at death was between 45-54 years and principal cause of death (24%) comprised the category "symptoms, signs, and abnormal results of clinical and laboratory tests, not classified elsewhere". Of these, 66% were related to the circulatory and respiratory systems. "Diseases of the respiratory system" were the second most common cause of death (19% compared with 6% in the French general population). The third most common cause of death was "diseases of the circulatory system" (15% compared with 29% in the French general population). While deaths caused by tumour pathologies in the general population are the most common cause of deaths, these represented only 7% of deaths in subjects with cerebral palsy.

These results concur with other published data, i.e. subjects with cerebral palsy die younger than the French general population, and the principal causes of death are respiratory and circulatory problems. This study emphasises the importance of access to epidemiological data about the French cerebral palsy population.