"Cardiac Arrest" Likely Caused Decades of Errant Health Reporting and Research Papers

Is cardiac disease really the leading cause of death in America or is it just an artifact from a bug in the W.H.O. ICD-10 coding system?

What I have been saying for a few years, Grok actually got right [Grok’s answer is at the end of this article].

People confuse “cardiac arrest” with a heart attack. It is NOT a heart attack. All it literally means is that the “heart” “stopped.” And that happens in every death. The term is nearly useless as an entry on death records. Yet, it is often included in the “cardiac disease” category for reporting of causes of death by category.

Then, why do death certifiers use “cardiopulmonary arrest” so often on death records? And because it is included in the “cardiac disease” category, are all statistics regarding cardiac disease misleading at best, and completely errant at worst?

In order to determine the significance of “cardiac arrest” relative to heart disease reporting, a review of ICD-10 codes involved in death records in the United States is offered.

The category of heart disease chosen for this argument is ICD-10 Code prefixes I30-I51, which is labeled, “Other forms of heart disease.” The 2018-2025 total death records involving I30-I51 in the United States is 7,951,856.

The I46 prefix means, “Cardiac arrest,” and was used on 3,127,420 death records in the United States in years 2018-2025. That is, the entire cardiac code base of prefixes I30-I51 is dominated by the single code prefix, I46, at the rate of 39.3%. Remember that “cardiac arrest” has no useful meaning in context of cause of death and should not be counted in the cardiac disease category.

To make matters worse, I48 “Atrial fibrillation and flutter” and I49 “Other cardiac arrhythmias” also are subjective and may be often wrongfully attributed as causes of death. The three prefixes together (I46, I48, and I49) comprise 4,923,426, or 61.9%, of all I30-I51 involved death records in the United States for years 2018-2025.

To summarize, 61.9% of all death records certified in the “cardiac disease” category of deaths may have nothing to do with heart disease. This statement is not hyperbole, not an opinion or a guess, but rather is factual and derived from the CDC Wonder data.

As promised, here is how Grok answered my question regarding “I46” cardiac arrest:

Me: When does a medical examiner use the term “cardiopulmonary arrest” on a death record? What is the criteria? Is it objective or subjective?

Grok’s answer:

Medical examiners (or coroners) in the United States follow standardized guidelines, primarily from the CDC’s National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) and the Physician’s Handbook on Medical Certification of Death, when completing death certificates.The term “cardiopulmonary arrest” (also called cardiorespiratory arrest or similar variants like cardiac arrest or respiratory arrest) is not used as a valid or acceptable cause of death on a death certificate, including those completed by medical examiners.Why It Is Not Used

• Cardiopulmonary arrest describes the mechanism or terminal event of death—the point at which the heart and lungs stop functioning, leading to cessation of circulation and respiration. This is essentially synonymous with the fact of death itself.

• Death certificates require the cause of death, which means the disease, injury, poisoning, or other condition that initiated the chain of events leading to death (the underlying cause), along with any intermediate or immediate causes in the sequence.

• Guidelines explicitly instruct certifiers (including physicians, medical examiners, and coroners) to avoid entering terminal events such as:

  • Cardiac arrest

  • Cardiopulmonary arrest

  • Respiratory arrest

  • Respiratory failure

  • Heart failure (when used alone without specificity)

• The CDC’s instructions for the cause-of-death section state: “DO NOT enter terminal events such as cardiac arrest, respiratory arrest, or cardiopulmonary arrest.” Listing it provides no useful information about why the person died and fails to support accurate vital statistics for public health purposes.

Criteria and When It Might Appear

• It should never stand alone (or as the primary/only entry) in the cause-of-death section (typically Part I of the U.S. standard death certificate).

• In rare cases, it might appear incorrectly due to poor certification practices, but official training and guidelines discourage or prohibit this. Medical examiners, who handle reportable deaths (e.g., unnatural, sudden, unexplained, or suspicious cases), are expected to adhere more strictly to these rules and determine a more specific cause through investigation, autopsy, toxicology, or other evidence.

• If no specific underlying cause can be determined after full investigation (e.g., in some unwitnessed or decomposed cases), terms like “undetermined” or “pending further investigation” may be used temporarily, but not “cardiopulmonary arrest” as a substitute.

Objective or Subjective?The determination of the cause of death (and avoidance of nonspecific terms like cardiopulmonary arrest) is intended to be as objective as possible, based on:

• Medical history

• Clinical findings

• Autopsy results

• Toxicology

• Scene investigation

• Witness statements

However, some elements involve professional medical judgment (e.g., interpreting the sequence of conditions or weighing contributing factors), so there can be an element of subjectivity in borderline or complex cases. Guidelines aim to minimize this by requiring specificity and prohibiting nonspecific mechanisms. In summary, a medical examiner should not use “cardiopulmonary arrest” as the cause (or part of the causal chain) on a death record. It is a redundant description of dying/death, not a cause, and its use is considered poor practice per U.S. vital statistics standards.

It is very frustrating listening to people talk about “cardiac arrest” as a heart attack, which it is not, and listening to scientists and doctors quoting statistics from public health agencies and medical journals stating that heart disease is the leading cause of death in America, while knowing the foundation of those statistics is fatally flawed.

God help us from the incompetence of government systems. Perhaps someone in government will one day look at the TBM methodology and ALPHA system put together by Summa Logica LLC.

Palantir AI will build a system for government to propagandize The People, stoke fear, manipulate The People toward government objectives, and eventually kill millions of innocent people. Decentralization is the only path to truth, transparency, and better health for Americans. Abolish the CDC, pare the NIH to a skeleton crew, reduce CMS to handling federal employees only, and return all the cut functions to the states. A distributed system will self-correct the waste fraud and abuse created by the centralized system (the fed). Communism and socialism have ruined the health of the American People.

God Bless You all

John 14:6 TRUTH

Source: (2026 Feb 07). CDC Wonder. Retrieved by John Beaudoin Sr for Summa Logica LLC from https://wonder.cdc.gov