You asked:
I wish to put forward an FOI request regarding the number of deaths that have occurred under general anaesthetic (GA) for dental procedures.
Please provide the following information:
- Number of deaths per year since 2000 (including the full year 2000) under GA for dental procedures, either under the care of the Public Dental Service (PDS) or Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery (OMFS)
- The age of the patients that died.
We said:
Our data uses the information supplied when a death is registered. From this a single underlying cause is assigned to each death using the International Classification of Diseases version 10 (ICD-10).
Deaths where the underlying cause is anaesthetics and therapeutic gases are assigned the ICD-10 code Y48. This code includes, and can be further broken down by, each of the following:
Y48.0 - Inhaled anaesthetics
Y48.1 - Parenteral anaesthetics
Y48.2 - Other and unspecified general anaesthetics
Y48.3 - Local anaesthetics
Y48.4 - Anaesthetic, unspecified
Y48.5 - Therapeutic gases
Unfortunately we cannot determine if these deaths to anaesthetics and therapeutic gases occurred during a dental procedure.
The number of deaths registered in 2015 by age and cause can be downloaded from our explorable dataset: https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/query/select/getdatasetbytheme.asp?theme=73
For years 2006-2014 this data can be found in table 5.19 of our deaths registered in England and Wales (DR) publication: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/deathsregisteredinenglandandwalesseriesdrreferencetables
From 1999 to 2006 deaths by age and cause can be found in table 2.19 of our Mortality statistics: Cause, England and Wales (series DH2) publication. However this data is based on deaths occurring in a reference year rather deaths registered so is not directly comparable to the more recent publications: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160108040855/http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/vsob1/mortality-statistics--cause--england-and-wales--series-dh2--discontinued-/index.html
Prior to 2001, cause of death was coded using the International Classification of Diseases version 9 (ICD-9). ICD-9 codes are not directly comparable with ICD-10.
Other special extracts and tabulations of mortality data for England and Wales are available (subject to legal frameworks, disclosure control, resources and agreement of costs, where appropriate). If you would like any further information, you can contact the team directly at: vsob@ons.gov.uk