cause of death

cause of death (plural causes of death)

1. The official cause of a human death as typically determined by a coroner during an autopsy and included on the death certificate of a deceased person.
   • 2015 February 26, Francis S. Collins, Harold Varmus, “A New Initiative on Precision Medicine”, in The New England Journal of Medicine, volume 372, number 9, →DOI, pages 793–794:

     Cancers are common diseases; in the aggregate, they are among the leading causes of death nationally and worldwide, and their incidence is increasing as the population ages.

• manner of death
• mechanism of death