Case Fatality Rate

case fatality rate, also called case fatality risk or case fatality ratio, in epidemiology, the proportion of people who die from a specified disease among all individuals diagnosed with the disease over a certain period of time. Case fatality rate typically is used as a measure of disease severity and is often used for prognosis (predicting disease course or outcome), where comparatively high rates are indicative of relatively poor outcomes. It also can be used to evaluate the effect of new treatments, with measures decreasing as treatments improve. Case fatality rates are not constant; they can vary between populations and over time, depending on the interplay between the causative agent of disease, the host, and the environment as well as available treatments and quality of patient care.

Case fatality rate is calculated by dividing the number of deaths from a specified disease over a defined period of time by the number of individuals diagnosed with the disease during that time; the resulting ratio is then multiplied by 100 to yield a percentage. This calculation differs from that used for mortality rate, another measure of death for a given population. Although number of deaths serves as the numerator for both measures, mortality rate is calculated by dividing the number of deaths by the population at risk during a certain time frame. As a true rate, it estimates the risk of dying of a certain disease. Hence, the two measures provide different information.

As an example, consider two populations. One population consists of 1,000 people; 300 of these people have the specified disease, 100 of whom die from the disease. In this case, the mortality rate for the disease is 100 ÷ 1,000 = 0.1, or 10 percent. The case fatality rate is 100 ÷ 300 = 0.33, or 33 percent. The second population also has 1,000 people; 50 people have the disease and 40 die from it. Here the mortality rate is 40 ÷ 1,000 = 0.04, or 4 percent; the case fatality rate, however, is 40 ÷ 50 = 0.8, or 80 percent. The incidence of death from the disease is higher in the first population, but the severity of disease is greater in the second.

A major difficulty in estimating case fatality rate is ensuring the accuracy of the numerator and the denominator. For example, as duration of the disease of interest lengthens, a person becomes increasingly likely to die of causes that are not associated with the specified disease. If death from another cause is inadvertently counted in the numerator, the case fatality rate will be overestimated. If the death was caused by the disease in question but was not included in the numerator, the case fatality rate will be underestimated. These difficulties explain why case fatality rates tend to be used for acute infectious diseases or diseases with short duration rather than for chronic diseases or diseases of relatively long duration.