Despite overall improved mortality rates, the number of people found at home so decomposed that it is impossible to determine their cause of death is on the rise in parts of the UK. A new study led by University of Oxford researchers tries to parse the cause.

The study examined data from the UK’s Office of National Statistics (ONS). To comb through the records and arrive at decomposition numbers, the researchers used two proxy codes assigned to deaths via the WHO’s International Classification of Diseases. One is code R98, which stands for “unattended deaths.” The other is R99, which stands for “other ill-defined and unknown causes of mortality,” which is the only code that can be applied when a death is indicated as decomposed or unascertained.

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Reasoning that these two codes could stand in as a proxy to identify badly decomposed bodies found at home, the researchers say that if someone died in a hospital, it would be highly unlikely that the cause of death would be unknown. Also, they say that if a dead body was discovered outside the home, the result would likely be some kind of trauma, which a post-mortem could ascertain. Still, the research team does acknowledge the limits of using this coding as a proxy for their research.

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