Causes of death across different locations in the United States, 2015 to 2022

Taha Mansoor; Daniyal Shahid; Kartik Gupta; Dmitry Abramov; Salim S Virani; Abdul Mannan Khan Minhas

doi:10.1080/08998280.2025.2480979

Causes of death across different locations in the United States, 2015 to 2022

Proc (Bayl Univ Med Cent). 2025 Apr 10;38(4):454-459. doi: 10.1080/08998280.2025.2480979. eCollection 2025.

Authors

Taha Mansoor¹, Daniyal Shahid², Kartik Gupta³, Dmitry Abramov⁴, Salim S Virani⁵, Abdul Mannan Khan Minhas^{6

7}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Internal Medicine, Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine, Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA.
² Department of Internal Medicine, Shifa College of Medicine, Islamabad, Pakistan.
³ Department of Cardiology, Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit, Michigan, USA.
⁴ Division of Cardiology, Department of Medicine, Loma Linda University Health, Loma Linda, California, USA.
⁵ Department of Medicine, Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan.
⁶ Department of Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, USA.
⁷ Section of Cardiology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, USA.

Abstract

Objective: The objective of this study was to investigate the leading underlying causes of death across different locations in the USA from 2015 to 2022.

Methods: Data on the leading underlying causes of death in each location of death-including medical outpatient facility or emergency room, medical inpatient facility, medical facility/dead on arrival, decedent's home, hospice facility, and nursing home/long-term care-within the USA in individuals ≥18 years were extracted from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Wide-Ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research (CDC WONDER) database.

Results: There were 22,236,700 deaths in our studied locations during the study period. Most deaths were in the decedents' homes (34.5%), followed by inpatient medical facilities (31.8%). Malignant neoplasms were the leading cause of death in hospice facilities (32.8%-40.0%) and decedents' homes (25.9%-31.5%), followed by heart disease. Heart disease was the most common cause of death in nursing homes/long-term care facilities (20.0%-23.6%), outpatient or emergency medical facilities (36.5%-44.7%), those dead on arrival at medical facilities (35.4%-40.3%), and inpatient medical facilities (14.3%-20.4%), with COVID-19 becoming the top cause of death in 2020 and 2021 in inpatient medical facilities.

Conclusion: Overall, heart disease and malignant neoplasm were among the top three causes of death in all studied locations in our study period.

Keywords: Death; location; trends.