The relationship of life expectancy to the development and valuation of life care plans.

Background: A life care plan often analyzes needs up to a person's life expectancy. Expected present value of necessary funding for such a plan is likewise based on the fixed survival time. If a client should live beyond or die before the life expectancy, a shortfall or excess of funding may seem inevitable.

Extrapolating published survival curves to obtain evidence-based estimates of life expectancy in cerebral palsy.

Studies reporting long-term survival probabilities for cohorts of persons with cerebral palsy provide evidence-based information on the life expectancy of those cohorts. Some studies have provided estimates of life expectancy based on extrapolation of such evidence, whereas many others have opted not to do so. Here we review the basic methods of life table analysis necessary for performing such extrapolations, and apply these methods to obtain evidence-based estimates of life expectancy from several studies that do not report such estimates themselves.

Comparative Mortality and Risk Factors for Death among US Supreme Court Justices (1789-2013).

Objectives .- To compare the mortality experience of 112 justices of the US Supreme Court with that expected in the general population. To identify variables associated with mortality within this cohort.

Cognitive impairment and mortality in the Cardiovascular Health Study.

Cognitive impairment is associated with increased mortality, depending on the severity of impairment. We analyzed data from the Cardiovascular Health Study (CHS), using Cox proportional hazards regression models to quantify the effect of the impairment. After adjustment for age, sex, and medical risk factors, we found the resulting relative risks to range from 1.

Life expectancy and years of life lost in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: findings from the NHANES III Follow-up Study.

Rationale: Previous studies have demonstrated that chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) causes increased mortality in the general population. But life expectancy and the years of life lost have not been reported.

Objectives: To quantify mortality, examine how it varies with age, sex, and other risk factors, and determine how life expectancy is affected.

Underwriting the presidents.

The United States has had 43 presidents. We examined whether they survive significantly longer or shorter than their contemporaries. We found that survival was better for presidents elected in the 1789-1841 and 1933-2001 periods (SMRs of 0.

Smoking habit and mortality: a meta-analysis.

Cigarette smoking leads to excess mortality risk. Although it is well known that the risk increases with the number of pack-years of smoking--that is, how much a person smokes, or "habit"--there is apparently no published studies that organize and synthesize the evidence on this topic. This paper provides a meta-analysis of the latest published findings relating to cigarette smoking habit and excess mortality.