- published: 03 Jan 2016
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Mortality rate is a measure of the number of deaths (in general, or due to a specific cause) in a population, scaled to the size of that population, per unit of time. Mortality rate is typically expressed in units of deaths per 1000 individuals per year; thus, a mortality rate of 9.5 (out of 1000) in a population of 100,000 would mean 950 deaths per year in that entire population, or 0.95% out of the total. It is distinct from morbidity rate, which refers to the number of individuals in poor health during a given time period (the prevalence rate) or the number of newly appearing cases of the disease per unit of time (incidence rate). The term "mortality" is also sometimes inappropriately used to refer to the number of deaths among a set of diagnosed hospital cases for a disease or injury, rather than for the general population of a country or ethnic group. This disease mortality statistic is more precisely referred to as "case fatality".
One distinguishes:
In regard to the success or failure of medical treatment or procedures, one would also distinguish: