Open J Public Health | Volume 3, Issue 1 | Review Article | Open Access
David A Swanson*
Department of Sociology, University of California Riverside, USA
*Correspondance to: David A Swanson
Fulltext PDFThere are approximately 100,000 people in the United States with Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) and the paucity of life tables for this population makes it difficult to determine if research and treatment innovations have improved their life expectancy over time and relative to the general U.S. population. Using mortality data generated in a population-based surveillance study over the period, 2004 to 2008, this paper generates a life table for this study population circa 2006 and applies it to the US population that has SCD. I find that a newborn with this condition circa 2006 had a life expectancy of approximately 48 years. For the total U.S. population, newborns in 2006 were expected to live to approximately 78 years, 30 years longer than a newborn with SCD. The probability of a newborn with SCD reaching age 55 is approximately 0.35 while the probability of a newborn in the US population as a whole living to age 55 is approximately 0.92. Comparing the life expectancy at birth of approximately 48 years found for circa 2006 with the results of a recent cohort simulation study that uses the same mortality data generated in the population-based surveillance study over the period, 2004 to 2008, I find a difference of approximately six years, where the latter finds a life expectancy of 54 years at birth. Because of advances in treating SCD, it is likely that there is hidden cohort heterogeneity in the data underlying the life table such that younger cohorts will likely live longer than implied by the 2006 life table.
Person-years lived; Period life table; Cohort; Hidden heterogeneity: Averaging
Swanson DA. An Example of Converting Clinical Study Mortality Data into a Life Table: The U.S. Population with Sickle Cell Disease. Open J Public Health. 2021;3(1):1020..