The Charlson Comorbidity Index - Text Mining Techniques for Healthcare Provider Quality Determination - page 160

Table 3. Mortality by patient condition

Patient Condition # Patients

With Condition

# Patients Who
Died in the Hospital

Proportion of
Patients Who Died

Acute Myocardial Infarction 407,376 22,842 5.56

Congestive Heart Failure 859,327 54,599 6.35

Peripheral Vascular Disease 190,961 7100 3.72

Cerebral Vascular Accident 373,049 20,689 5.55

Dementia 52,247 2258 4.32

Pulmonary Disease 1,294,183 43,921 3.39

Connective Tissue Disorder 119,542 2502 2.09

Peptic Ulcer 89,582 2530 2.82

Liver Disease 83,672 6490 7.76

Diabetes 1,052,854 22,785 2.16

Diabetes Complications 177.179 3579 2.02

Paraplegia 52,769 2936 5.56

Renal Disease 163,674 10,974 6.70

Cancer 182,145 10,010 5.50

Metastatic Cancer 206,543 21,625 10.47

Severe Liver Disease 38,920 4911 12.62

HIV 33,034 1683 5.09

Figure 1 gives the percentage of mortality by the computed Charlson Index value. It shows that a
higher value of the index does not always result in a higher rate of mortality. In particular, an index
value of 13 has a mortality rate 10% lower compared to an index value of 12. However, the purpose of
the weighting is to have a higher risk of mortality as the index value increases. Clearly, there are some
problems with the index since this ordering of mortality does not occur.

Figure 1. Percentage of mortality by Charlson index