A.L. Cochrane

Factors associated with cardiac mortality in developed countries with particular reference to the consumption of wine.

Deaths from ischaemic heart-disease in 18 developed countries are not strongly associated with health-service factors such as doctor and nurse density. There is a negative association with gross national product per capita and a positive but inconsistent association with saturated and monounsaturated fat intake. The principal finding is a strong and specific negative association between ischaemic heart-disease deaths and alcohol consumption. This is shown to be wholly attributable to wine consumption.

Health service "input" and mortality "output" in developed countries.

The relationship between age-specific mortality rates and some indices of health facilities and some environmental and dietary factors has been studied in 18 developed couuntries. The indices of health care are not negatively associated with mortality, and there is a marked positive association between the prevalence of doctors and mortality in the younger age groups. No explanation of this doctor anomaly has so far been found. Gross national product per head is the principal variable which shows a consistently strong negative association with mortality.

Health service "input" and mortality "output" in developed countries. 1968 [historical article].

Health services in developed countries, both state and private, are based upon many common assumptions about what constitutes adequate health care. Doctors and their paramedical colleagues in different developed countries receive similar educations to more or less the same standards, and their approaches to clinical and preventive medicine are unlikely to differ in fundamental principles. However, these countries show marked differences in their mortality rates and in health costs per head. In this paper, we seek to discover some factors to explain these differences in mortality.