You asked
A Guardian article from 2010 lists specific causes of death including choking by inhalation of food;
theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/oct/28/mortality-statistics-causes-death-england-wales-2010
I would like to know how common choking on ingested food is as a cause of death in the UK. Specifically whether or not there has been any change in this as a cause of mortality in recent years, particularly in those over the age of 70.
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
We routinely publish annual mortality statistics based on calendar year, for which the latest available data is for 2016. Data for 2017 is due to be published in October/November (provisional).
Cause of death is coded using version 10 of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10).
The Guardian have used 2 ICD-10 codes and classified these as choking.
W78 Inhalation of gastric contents
W79 Inhalation and ingestion of food causing obstruction of respiratory tract
These are the correct ICD-10 codes to use for deaths to choking on ingested foods.
The latest year for which mortality data is available is 2016. Deaths by underlying cause and age are available for 2013-2016 in our explorable dataset, where you can filter the data by the specific ICD-10 codes you are interested in: https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/query/select/getdatasetbytheme.asp?theme=73
Prior to 2013, this information is available in table 5 of our Deaths registered in England and Wales (series DR) publication. This table only includes the causes where there were at least one death during the registration year: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/deathsregisteredinenglandandwalesseriesdrreferencetables
Data for Northern Ireland is available at https://www.nisra.gov.uk/statistics/births-deaths-and-marriages/cause-death and for Scotland at https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/statistics-and-data/statistics/statistics-by-theme/vital-events/deaths
Special extracts and tabulations of mortality data for England and Wales are available to order (subject to legal frameworks, disclosure control, resources and agreements of costs, where appropriate). Such enquiries should be made to: vsob@ons.gov.uk