Mortality in north american dogs from 1984 to 2004: an investigation into age-, size-, and breed-related causes of death.
Level 4 - case-series / case-control
By design analogy; retrospective database study of veterinary hospital records.
PubMed 21352376 · doi:10.1111/j.1939-1676.2011.0695.x
What was done
Retrospective analysis of 74,556 canine deaths recorded in the Veterinary Medical Database (VMDB) between 1984 and 2004. Abstracted causes of death were categorized by organ system and pathophysiologic process and analyzed across age, breed, and breed-standard body mass.
What was found
The abstract reports directional associations without quantitative metrics or numerical risk estimates. Causes of death segregated by age, breed, and breed-standard mass. Young dogs died more commonly from gastrointestinal and infectious causes, whereas older dogs died more commonly from neurologic and neoplastic causes. Increasing age was associated with higher risk of mortality from cardiovascular, endocrine, and urogenital causes, but not hematopoietic or musculoskeletal causes. Larger breeds died more commonly from musculoskeletal and gastrointestinal causes, while smaller breeds died more commonly from endocrine causes.
Why it matters
Identifying breed-, size-, and age-specific mortality patterns provides baseline epidemiological targets to guide preventive veterinary healthcare and inform research on canine disease genetics.
Limits
The abstract provides no numerical rates, odds ratios, or confidence intervals. Data were restricted to dogs whose deaths occurred during recorded hospital visits within a referral/academic database (VMDB), which introduces potential selection and referral bias that may not reflect mortality in the broader community canine population.
Cited by
- supports Cancer is the number one cause of death in domestic dogs.