Mortality from unspecified causes of death in Russia

Introduction. High mortality from certain unspecified causes of death leads to a degradation of mortality statistics for causes, which is especially noticeable in a number of Russian regions.

Purpose. To assess the quality of mortality statistics in the regions of Russia through the prism of the frequency usage of codes from unspecified causes of death.

Materials and methods. Standardized mortality rates from unspecified causes of death and their share of the standardized mortality rate from all causes were calculated, 2011–2021. The Russian database on fertility and mortality in Russia was used.

Results. In the Republics of Bashkortostan, Chechnya and Ingushetia, up to 40–45% of deaths are encoded by codes of unspecified causes. The lowest proportion of unspecified causes were observed in the Tula (18%), Penza (19%) and Leningrad (21%) regions, the Republics of Dagestan (20%) and Buryatia (20%). The rating of regions with a high all-cause age-standardized death rates is largely formed by the large contribution of the standardized death rate from unspecified causes of the class “Diseases of the circulatory system” in both sexes (correlation coefficient 0.83 for men and 0.76 for women), injuries with uncertain intentions of the class “External causes of mortality and morbidity” in men (0.38) and “Senility” of the class “Symptoms and signs” in women (0.45).

Research limitations. The use of the abridged list of the ICD-10.

Conclusions. Regions use differently both unspecified code and codes of large classes in general. In regions with a high cumulative proportion of unspecified causes, the proportion of unspecified causes in each of the ICD-10 classes considered is most often high. The mirror trend in the mortality from some unspecified and specified causes of death suggests which causes of death regions tend to encode as unspecified.

Compliance with ethical standards. This study does not require a conclusion from the Local Ethics Committee.

Contribution of the authors:
Yumaguzin V.V. — research concept and design, writing the text, statistical data processing;
Vinnik M.V. — collection and processing of material, compilation of the list of literature, editing.
All authors are responsible for the integrity of all parts of the manuscript and approval of the manuscript final version.

Funding. This study is an output of a research project implemented as part of the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE University).

Conflict of interest. The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Received: February 28, 2025 / Revised: May 15, 2025 / Accepted: October 8, 2025 / Published: December 17, 2025

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