Figures & data
Figure 1. Deaths per 1,000 shown for 10-year age bands on a log scale (Citation12). The 9 headings indicate the updates to the international classifications of disease (ICD) during this period. In ICD1, “bronchitis” was used without qualification. Important conversion factors have been applied to the change from ICD 2 to 3 (which first used a sub-category of “acute bronchitis”) in the early 1920s and from ICD 4 to 5 in 1940 when rules of precedence in causes of death were changed. Nevertheless the label “chronic bronchitis,” whether or not emphysema was mentioned, was applied to the great majority of deaths from “chronic bronchitis and emphysema” in Britain throughout the century until the term “chronic airways obstruction” was introduced in ICD 9 in 1978. Note: The large falls in mortality in both men and women of all ages in the 1920s which continued in the 1930s for all age groups except middle-aged men.
Figure 2. Cigarette smoking in the United Kingdom in the 20th century. Figures not available beyond 1985 when tobacco smuggling into the United Kingdom became significant (P.N. Lee, personal communication, May 2013).
Figure 3. Mortality for CB&E in 55–74-year-old men and women in the United States and United Kingdom. Data analysed by J. Boreham and R. Peto from the WHO Mortality Database for deaths COPD in the United States and United Kingdom for 55–74-year-old men and women (Citation57).
Figure 4. Death rates from lung cancer and ‘bronchitis’ per 100,000 in men and women aged 45–64 years in England and Wales. Note the considerable decline in mortality from “bronchitis” in middle-aged women between 1931 and 1965 and the dissociation between trends in death from lung cancer and bronchitis in both middle-aged men and women (reprinted from ref. (Citation58). In this period the diagnosis of “bronchitis” in Britain referred to “chronic bronchitis.”
