Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD): mortality data

As shown in Chart 1, the reported annual mortality rate due to COPD increased between 2021 and 2022 for males and females after declining sharply during 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This decrease may be the result of increased mortality from COVID-19 in COPD sufferers, with a review by Gerayeli et al. (2021) finding mortality to be almost 2.5 times greater in sufferers of COPD than non-sufferers. As these figures include only records where COPD was reported as the “underlying” or primary cause of death, this likely excludes COPD sufferers for whom the cause of death was recorded as COVID-19. Furthermore, provision of healthcare services and their use by the public altered significantly during the pandemic, with many facing barriers to accessing or being unwilling to access services. ScotPHO therefore advises readers to interpret these figures with caution. 

When standardised to control for age differences using the 2013 European Standard Population, an 8.9% rise in COPD mortality rate was reported in males between 2021 and 2022, from 50.3 to 54.8 deaths per 100,000 population. In females the rate of increase was slightly higher, with a 10.9% rise in deaths from 43.3 to 48.0 deaths per 100,000 population.

Despite a year-on-year increase reported in 2022, annual COPD mortality rates were still lower than prior to the pandemic in both sexes. In males, the annual mortality rate was 6.6% lower than in 2019 and in females 12.6% lower, with 2019 rates of 58.7 and 54.9 deaths per 100,000 population reported in males and females respectively.

In the long-term, the annual mortality rate due to COPD has been declining in males, with a 43.7% reduction reported from 97.3 to 54.8 deaths per 100,000 population between 1996 and 2022. In females, the annual mortality rate is virtually unchanged between 1996 and 2022, with 48.0 deaths per 100,000 population reported in both 1996 and 2022. Sex-based differences in mortality have reduced drastically over the past three decades, with the ratio of male to female death rates falling from 2.0 to 1.1 between 1996 and 2022.

More information on deaths due to COPD can be found in the ScotPHO Profiles Tool.

Age-standardised Death Rates are also published by the National Records of Scotland (NRS) for respiratory diseases as a whole. Note that NRS includes non-residents in their analysis.