Rob J Hyndman

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Forecasts of COPD mortality in Australia: 2006–2025

Published on 30 January 2012 in Refereed papers

Bircan Erbas1, Shahid Ullah2, Rob J Hyndman3, Michelle Scollo4, Michael Abramson5

BMC Med­ical Research Meth­od­o­logy, 2012, to appear.

  1. School of Pub­lic Health, La Trobe Uni­ver­sity, Bun­doora, 3086Australia
  2. School of Human Move­ment and Sport Sci­ences, Uni­ver­sity of Ballarat,Mount Helen, Vic­toria, 3353,Australia
  3. Depart­ment of Eco­no­met­rics and Busi­ness Stat­ist­ics, Mon­ash Uni­ver­sity, Clayton, 3800, Australia
  4. VicHealth Centre for Tobacco Con­trol, The Can­cer Coun­cil Victoria,100 Drum­mond St, Carlton, Vic­toria, 3053
  5. School of Pub­lic Health and Pre­vent­ive Medi­cine, Mon­ash University,Alfred Hos­pital, Mel­bourne, 3004,Australia.

ABSTRACT

Back­ground: Chronic Obstruct­ive Pul­mon­ary Dis­ease (COPD) is cur­rently the fifth lead­ing cause of death in Aus­tralia, and there are marked dif­fer­ences in mor­tal­ity trends between men and women. In this study, we have sought to model and fore­cast age related changes in COPD mor­tal­ity over time for men and women sep­ar­ately over the period 2006–2025.

Meth­ods: Annual COPD death rates in Aus­tralia from 1922 to 2005 for age groups (50–54, 55–59, 60–64, 65–69, 70–74, 75–79, 80–84, 85+) were used. Func­tional time series mod­els of age-​​specific COPD mor­tal­ity rates for men and women were used, and fore­casts of mor­tal­ity rates were mod­elled sep­ar­ately for men and women.

Res­ults: Func­tional time series mod­els with four basis func­tions were fit­ted to each pop­u­la­tion sep­ar­ately. Twenty-​​year fore­casts were com­puted, and indic­ated an over­all decline. This decline may be slower for women than for men. By age, we expect sim­ilar rates of decline in men over time. In con­trast, for women, fore­casts for the age group 75–79 years sug­gest less of a decline over time com­pared to younger age groups.

Con­clu­sions: By using a new method to pre­dict age-​​specific trends in COPD mor­tal­ity over time, this study provides import­ant insights into at-​​risk age groups for men and women sep­ar­ately, which has implic­a­tions for policy and pro­gram development.

Key words: COPD mor­tal­ity, func­tional data ana­lysis, tobacco con­sump­tion, forecasting

 

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