epidemiology of the mortality, calculation of life expectancy and years of lost life: the case of bane, north west of iran

background and purpose: mortality statistics and rates show the development of a country in the world. these statistics are very important for determining the distribution of risk factors of mortality (in age and gender groups, ethnicity and so on) and they are useful for improving health and preventing from important diseases in future planning of countries in societies. materials and methods: this article is a longitudinal descriptive study. all registered deaths in bane which occurred during 2006-2010, regardless of the cause, were collected from the department of health in kurdistan university of medical sciences, and they were assigned into 21 categories based on disease category (icd10) of who. then the life table for every year was prepared and life expectancy was computed for each age and sex and total lost years of life for all chapters of icd10 were calculated. results: based on the icd10, four chapters with the highest frequencies include circulatory diseases by 1008 cases (32.5%), external causes of death by 522 cases (16.7%), cancers by 480 cases (15.3%), and prenatal death by 382 cases (12.2%). overall, these chapters include 76.4% of total death. the most years of lost life were reported for prenatal period, external causes, diseases of the circulatory system and cancers. conclusion: cardiovascular diseases, incidents and accidents, and cancers are the most important causes of death. among the main reasons of death in the first group are high blood pressures, lack of movement, smoking, not consuming enough fruits, vegetables. in the second group the reasons include not obeying the traffic rules, high speed and so on. since the sum years of lost life were the highest in the prenatal period, it is necessary to improve pregnancy care and teach mothers prior to pregnancy.