A parametric approach for measuring the effect of the 10th revision of the international classification of diseases

Summary.  The World Health Organization revises the international classification of diseases about every 10 years to stay abreast of advances in medical science and to compare international health statistics. However, the new revision (i.e. the 10th revision) introduces discontinuities in mortality trends, making it impossible to compare the mortality statistics before and after the revision directly. The US National Center for Health Statistics published comparability ratios to correct the discontinuities between the two sets of mortality data: one coded by the ninth revision and the other by the 10th revision. We propose a parametric two-stage model to produce new comparability ratios and use these ratios to correct the discontinuities. The asymptotic behaviour of the comparability ratios is investigated. Our model not only measures the extent of discontinuities in trends in mortality but also can be used to forecast future mortality. Comparing with the National Center for Health Statistics's ratios, our comparability ratios smooth out the discontinuities better for most causes.