All deaths in the CCC are reported following the “Coding of Death in HIV” (CoDe) system, which assigns an underlying cause of death according to the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10).
A total of 477 CCC participants have died. Recently, overdose (18%; figure 5) has overtaken liver disease and other causes of death and is now the most common, reflecting Canada’s unprecedented and growing drug-related overdose crisis with opioid-related deaths steadily on the rise.
The second most common cause of death is end-stage liver disease (ESLD) (14%). While AIDS-related mortality has dramatically decreased in response to the widespread use of antiretroviral therapy, ESLD still remains a leading cause of death among people co-infected with HIV/HCV. Despite extensive efforts to obtain information from clinics and other sources, many causes of deaths could not be determined.