Death Records and ICD Codes

Have you ever noticed that it is sometimes difficult to decipher the cause of death on a death record due to illegible handwriting or because the cause is not something that is familiar to us today?  I saw an article on Facebook yesterday that was quite enlightening to me.  Often there is a handwritten number on the record that has a circle around it. Have you ever noticed it and wondered what it is?

"This often overlooked number comes from the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), or the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems as it is now known in full – and is currently maintained and updated by the World Health Organization.

The ICD was originally developed in the late 1800s and was known as the Bertillon Classification of Causes of Death, after its developer Jacques Bertillon, and later the International List of Causes of Death. The coding system was designed, in part, to provide a unified way to communicate and track causes of death and was used by a variety of nations. The US began using it in about 1898.

For this reason many official US death certificates after this time include these codes, as do certificates from many other countries at various times. The value to researchers today is that when causes of death are unreadable or confusing on a certificate we can look up the code and find the cause of death in a clearly written database. The information is made freely available online by Wolfbane Cybernetic.

To find the list of codes visit this page and then choose the revision that encompasses the year of your certificate. Because updates were/are made to the database about every 10 years you will need to access the correct revision. Information can change dramatically from revision to revision, so making sure you have the correct one is very important."

To read more about this tool to decipher the actual cause of death of your ancestors read the full article here.  I had never heard of the familyhistorydaily.com but it looks like they have some great posts.  I plan to check it out.  

http://familyhistorydaily.com/free-genealogy-resources/icd-codes-death-certificates-genealogy/

I think this can be especially helpful to people that are keeping a check on the causes of death in their family to see what genetic tendencies run in their families.  The interest in this is also heightened by the current surge in interest in DNA testing for health reasons.  So it is worth checking out the ICD codes when you cannot read the record and you'd like to know the cause of death for your ancestor.