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Find definitions of medical abbreviations commonly found in health records. If you do not know an abbreviation, you may be able to find out what it means here.
- Overview
- What is morbidity?
- Can you have more than one morbidity at a time?
- What is mortality?
- What are the most common causes of death in the United States?
- What is excess mortality?
- The bottom line
Morbidity typically refers to having a specific illness or health condition, while mortality refers to the number of deaths that a specific illness or health condition caused.
As we move through the COVID-19 pandemic, you may have encountered two terms: morbidity and mortality. These related terms are commonly used in the field of epidemiology.
Morbidity and mortality describe the frequency and severity of specific illnesses or conditions.
There’s often confusion between morbidity and mortality, so this article will help explain the difference between them, along with several examples of each term.
Morbidity is the state of having a specific illness or condition. While morbidity can refer to an acute condition, such as a respiratory infection, it often refers to a condition that’s chronic (long-lasting). Some examples of common morbidities include:
•diabetes
•high blood pressure (hypertension)
•heart disease
•obesity
•lung diseases, such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD)
You may have also come across a term that’s related to morbidity. It’s called comorbidity. It means that you have more than one illness or condition (morbidity) at the same time.
Depending on the condition, some comorbidities may be more common than others. For example, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), arthritis is often associated with other comorbid conditions like obesity and heart disease.
Knowing whether you have comorbidities can be very important in a healthcare setting. That’s because they can make a difference in the diagnosis, treatment, and outlook of an illness.
COVID-19 is a good current example of this. If you have certain health conditions (comorbidities) and you also develop COVID-19, the risk of a serious illness increases. Some examples of these comorbidities include:
•COPD
•coronary artery disease
Mortality refers to the number of deaths that have occurred due to a specific illness or condition.
Mortality is often expressed in the form of mortality rate. This is the number of deaths due to an illness divided by the total population at that time.
As with morbidity, mortality rate is often expressed in population units, typically as “per 100,000 people.” Let’s look at a simple example.
In 1 year, 50 heart attack deaths occurred within a population of 40,000. To determine mortality rate, you’d divide 50 by 40,000 and then multiply by 100,000. In this population, the mortality rate due to heart attack would be 125 per 100,000 people for that year.
According to the CDC, the top 10 causes of death in the United States for the year 2018 were:
1.heart disease
2.cancer
3.unintentional injury
4.chronic lower respiratory diseases
5.stroke
Generally speaking, the number of deaths remains relatively consistent in many populations from year to year. However, deaths can increase when events such as disease outbreaks, natural disasters, or wars occur.
Simply put, excess mortality is a comparison of the number of expected deaths versus the number of deaths that actually occurred.
COVID-19 is currently a cause of excess mortality throughout the world. A recent study found that deaths in the United States increased by 20 percent in the period spanning March through July of 2020. COVID-19 was the cause of 67 percent of these deaths.
The researchers theorize that the remaining excess deaths could be due to unrecognized COVID-19 or to other disruptions caused by the pandemic, such as interrupted access to regular healthcare.
Morbidity and mortality are two terms that are commonly used in epidemiology. While they’re related, they refer to different things. Morbidity and mortality are often expressed as a proportion or rate.
Morbidity is when you have a specific illness or condition. Some examples of common morbidities are heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. You can have more than one morbidity at a time. When this happens, it’s called comorbidity.
(mĕnd) v. mended, mending, mends. v.intr. a. To improve in health or condition: The patient is mending well. b. To heal: The bone mended in a month. mend′a·ble adj. mend′er n. The American Heritage® Medical Dictionary Copyright © 2007, 2004 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
The Miami Emergency Neurologic Deficit, or MEND, exam is another stroke scoring tool that healthcare facilities may utilize, which incorporates all three components of the CPSS (speech, droop, drift) and eight additional components from the NIHSS, such as LOC, eye gaze, orientation, commands, visual fields, leg motor strength, ataxia, and ...
Apr 8, 2024 · Healing involves natural or medical recovery, especially from emotional or physical wounds, while mending is fixing or repairing, often used for objects or relationships.
Oct 3, 2022 · It can be communicated as a rate or as an absolute number. Mortality usually gets represented as a rate per 1000 individuals, also called the death rate. The calculation for this rate is to divide the number of deaths in a given time for a given population by the total population.
Medical treatment injury frequency rate is simply the rate at which medical treatment injuries have occurred over a specific period of time, usually standardised into MTI per million hours worked or per 100 full-time workers during a one year period.
