Science / Medicine : Birth Defects Rank 5th as Early Death’s Cause

Birth defects continue to rank among the nation’s leading causes of premature death, according to federal health officials. The national Centers for Disease Control reported that in 1986, birth defects robbed their victims of 651,523 years of life they would have lived if they had reached age 65.

That ranked fifth among all causes of premature life-years lost. Ranking first was unintentional injury, with about 2.4 million lost life-years, followed by cancer, with 1.8 million, heart disease, with 1.5 million, and suicide and homicide, with 1.3 million.

In detailed statistics from 1985, the latest available, the birth defect causing the greatest premature mortality was lung abnormality--either partial development or abnormal growth of the lungs. Those conditions accounted for more than 9% of the life-years lost to birth defects, the CDC said.