Reconstructing Long-Term Series of Causes of Death

In 1988 we published the results of a lengthy effort to reconstruct a cause of death series [for France] based on the ICD-8 Detailed List for the period 1925-78....The work included a redistribution of ill-defined causes and an analysis of the results in terms of etio-anatomical groups of diseases and of their impact on life expectancy. However our study did not include more recent data based on the ICD-9 series which at that time had not been extended far enough to allow us to make the connections with the previous series....The work in progress is a new opportunity (1) to present our method through specific examples of matching ICD-8 and ICD-9 (2) to summarize the specific difficulties encountered when dealing with previous revisions to obtain the 1925-78 series and (3) to show examples of changes in coding practices independent of the ICD revision itself.