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Background: Malignant mesothelioma (MM) is rare and fatal; survival in most cases is only about one year. Mortality rate is, therefore, a good proxy measure of incidence rate. However, the specific International Classification of Diseases (ICD) code for MM was not available until the Tenth Revision ICD (ICD‐10). Little is known on which Ninth Revision ICD (ICD‐9) codes were assigned for MM in the ICD‐9 era. Methods: We used a 1996 double‐coded mortality file compiled by the National Center for Health Statistics to calculate the detection rate (DR) and confirmation rate (CR) of selected ICD‐9 codes. Results: Of 2386 decedents whose underlying cause of death was MM (ICD‐10 code C45), the DR (deaths) of corresponding ICD‐9 code was 57% (1365) for code 199 "malignant neoplasm without specification of site;" 19% (448) for code 162.9 "malignant neoplasm of trachea, bronchus, and lung, unspecified;" 13% (310) for code 163 "malignant neoplasm of pleura;" and 11% (271) for other codes. The CR (deaths) for the aforementioned three ICD‐9 codes were 4.0% (1365/33,942), 0.3% (448/150,342), and 70.8% (310/438), respectively. Conclusions: The three ICD‐9 codes (199, 162.9, and 163) were the most commonly used codes for MM and composed nine‐tenths of all MM deaths in the years before the ICD‐10 was introduced. Using only ICD‐9 code 163, the code most often used as the surrogate measure of MM in mortality studies in the ICD‐9 era, capture may have been only 13% of all MM deaths in the US, and the estimated number of MM deaths missed in 1996 would be 2086. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Claims databases consisting of routinely collected longitudinal records of medical expenditures are increasingly utilized for estimating expected medical costs of patients with a specific condition. Survival data of the patients of interest are usually highly censored, and observed expenditures are incomplete. In this study, we propose a survival-adjusted estimator for estimating mean lifetime costs, which integrates the product of the survival function and the mean cost function over the lifetime horizon. The survival function is estimated by a new algorithm of rolling extrapolation, aided by external information of age- and sex-matched referents simulated from national vital statistics. The mean cost function is estimated by a weighted average of mean expenditures of patients in a number of months prior to their death, of which the number could be determined by observed costs in their final months, and the weights depend on extrapolated hazards. We evaluate the performance of the proposed approach in comparison with that of a popular method using simulated data under various scenarios and 2 cohorts of intracerebral hemorrhage and ischemic stroke patients with a maximum follow-up of 13 years and conclude that our new method estimates the mean lifetime costs more accurately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background We applied the well-established, but rather under-utilized, indicator of Potential Years of Life Lost (PYLL) to estimate the global burden of mesothelioma and asbestosis. Methods We analyzed all deaths caused by mesothelioma and asbestosis that were reported by 82 and 55 countries, respectively, to the World Health Organization (WHO) from 1994 to 2010. Results The 128,015 and 13,885 persons who died of mesothelioma and asbestosis, potentially lost a total of 2.18 million and 180,000 years of life (PYLL), or, an annual average PYLL of 201,000 years and 17,000 years, respectively. The average PYLL per decedent were 17.0 and 13.0 years for mesothelioma and asbestosis, respectively. Conclusions The current burden of asbestos-related diseases (ARDs) in terms of PYLL is substantial. The future burden of ARDs can be eliminated by stopping the use of asbestos. Am. J. Ind. Med. 56:993-1000, 2013. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]