Technical Notes: Mortality Data
The SEER Program annually obtains from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) a file containing information on all deaths occurring in the US by calendar year. Information on each death includes age at death, sex, geographic area of residence, and underlying and contributing causes of death. For this publication, only the underlying cause of death is used in the calculation of death rates. Cause of death for 1969-1978 was coded according to ICD-8; for 1979-1998, ICD-9 was used; beginning with deaths in 1999, ICD-10 was used. Mortality rates for the SEER geographic areas, for each state, and for the entire US are obtained from these data. A list of the mortality site groupings used in this publication is in the Appendix and reflects updates made in 2004.
