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In many legal , the manner of death is a determination, typically made by the coroner, medical examiner, police, or similar officials, and recorded as a vital statistic. Within the United States and the United Kingdom, a distinction is made between the cause of death, which is a specific disease or injury, such as a gunshot wound or cancer, versus manner of death, which is primarily a legal determination, versus the mechanism of death (also called the mode of death), which does not explain why the person died or the underlying cause of death and is usually not specific to the cause or manner of death, such as asphyxiation, Arrhythmia or exsanguination.
Different categories are used in different jurisdictions, but manner of death determinations include everything from very broad categories like "natural" and "homicide" to specific manners like "traffic accident" or "gunshot wound". In some cases an autopsy is performed, either due to general legal requirements, because the medical cause of death is uncertain, upon the request of family members or guardians, or because the circumstances of death were suspicious.
International Classification of Disease codes are sometimes used to record manner and cause of death in a systematic way that makes it easy to compile statistics and feasible to compare events across jurisdictions.
As organisms age, various health-related consequences arise. In humans, a few examples include slower healing of Human skin, thickening of blood vessel walls, and a less effective immune system. For example, a fall may be more likely to cause internal bleeding, Atheroma buildup becomes more likely to cause a heart attack, and a cold may be more likely to result in pneumonia.
For much of human history, Physician who lacked the ability to understand causes of death attributed unknown causes to "old age." With Medicine and Medical device, doctors are now able to learn more about how an elderly person may have died. Still, many doctors will refer to a cause of death as "old age" if it is more comforting for loved ones than providing specific details.
There is particular ambiguity around the classification of cardiac deaths, triggered by a traumatic incident such as in stress cardiomyopathy. Liability for a death classified as by natural causes may still be found if a proximate cause is established, as in the 1969 California case People v. Stamp.
"Mechanism of death" is sometimes used to refer to the proximate cause of death, which might differ from the cause that is used to classify the manner of death. For example, the proximate cause or mechanism of death might be brain ischemia (lack of blood flow to the brain), caused by a malignant neoplasm (cancer), in turn caused by a dose of ionizing radiation administered by a person with intent to kill or injure, leading to certification of the manner of death as "homicide".
The manner of death can be recorded as "undetermined" if there is not enough evidence to reach a firm conclusion. For example, the discovery of a partial human skeleton indicates a death, but might not provide enough evidence to determine a cause.
In some jurisdictions, some more detailed manners may be reported in numbers broken out from the main four or five. For example:
In England and Wales, a specific list of choices for verdicts is not mandated, and "narrative verdicts" are allowed, which are not specifically classified. The verdicts aggregated by the Ministry of Justice are: – Table 6: Inquest verdicts returned, 1994-2008
The Norwegian Medical Association classifies what other jurisdictions might call "undetermined" as "unnatural":
Some insurance contracts, such as Life insurance, have special rules for certain manners of death. Suicide, for example, may invalidate claims under terms of such a contract.
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