Death Rates

Californians needing a coronary bypass can now, for the first time, look up which surgeons in the state have the best -- and worst -- mortality rates for that operation. A report released Thursday names and rates 302 surgeons who performed heart bypass operations at 121 California hospitals during 2003 and 2004. Prepared by the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development, the 143-page study is posted on the office's website, www.oshpd.ca.gov.

For decades, Marin County Coroner Ken Holmes preached against publicizing the grim frequency of suicides from the Golden Gate Bridge. He claimed that media tallies of the deaths created a circus atmosphere and even encouraged some people to jump. His campaign came to fruition in 1995, when Bay Area newspapers and TV stations agreed to stop treating the untimely deaths as news.

washington -- Americans are living longer than ever, but not as long as people in 41 other countries. For decades, the United States has been slipping in rankings of life expectancy, as other countries improve healthcare, nutrition and lifestyles. Countries that surpass the United States include Japan and most of Europe, as well as Jordan, Guam and the Cayman Islands.

White men in California can expect to live an average of seven more years than black men, according to a new study that echoes national surveys of the long-documented black-white gap. Heart disease and homicides account for much of the difference in life expectancies. White women in California live on average about five years longer than African American women, in large part because of higher rates of diabetes and stroke in the latter group.

"And as the flames climbed high into the night To light the sacrificial rite, I saw Satan laughing with delight The day the music died." -- Don McLean, "American Pie" -- Since the dawn of rock 'n' roll, death has been a recurring theme. But for many young musicians, lyrics that dwell on mortality are prophetic.

We've got big plans for retirement. We'll buy a boat and finally get that beachfront home -- in Costa Rica, if not Malibu. We'll dust off our passports and travel the world. We'll enjoy days chasing the grandkids around and spend romantic nights at home -- alone. But now I find that the man I plan to spend my twilight years with has only about four years of post-retirement leisure time coming. Then he'll croak.

Worldwide deaths for children younger than 5 dropped to an estimated 9.7 million last year, the lowest level since record-keeping began in 1960, the United Nations Children's Fund announced Wednesday. Even as the world population has grown, the number of early childhood deaths has shrunk to less than half its modern peak in 1960, the agency found. At that time, an estimated 20 million children died before reaching their fifth birthday.

Death rates from cancer continue to fall in the U.S., dropping more than 2% a year from 2002 through 2004, cancer experts are reporting today. There were sizable declines in deaths from lung, prostate and colorectal cancer in men, and from breast and colon cancer among women. Lung cancer deaths still rose among women, but the increase slowed.

The childhood death rate from cancer fell 20% in the United States from 1990 to 2004 largely because of improvements in treatment for leukemia, but children in the West still have the highest mortality rate, according to government figures released Thursday. There were 2,223 cancer deaths among children and adolescents in 2004, compared with 2,457 in 1990, researchers from the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

People living along the southern Atlantic coast of the U.S., as well as those residing along the Mississippi River, die at a faster rate than the national average, while death rates are below the norm in the upper Great Plains, a new study shows. These patterns of mortality have been consistent for 35 years, Dr. Jeralynn Sittig Cossman and colleagues from Mississippi State University found. "Place matters, and it matters for a long period of time," Cossman said.