of death. The following questions were asked to each of above persons: 1. What were the height, weight, waist and hip circumfer- ences, blood pressures of the victim? (If such information was not given in the record.) 2. Please tell any other illness which the deceased had in the past? eg, tuberculosis, AIDS, hypertension, diabetes, heart attack, obesity, paralysis, asthma, chronic bron- chitis, pneumonia, previous blood pressure, cancer, any surgery or injury, etc (to determine the primary cause of illness.) 3. Please describe the most important symptoms at the onset of illness: eg, fever, headache, severe pain anywhere in the body, seizures, etc 4. Please describe the most important symptoms at the time of death: eg, breathlessness, chest pain, unconsciousness, high fever, jaundice, anemia, bleeding, diarrhea, vomit- ing, etc. 5. Please describe the diagnosis of the illness made by the doctor. Was there any differences in the opinions of the doctors? The socioeconomic status of the family was classiﬁed based on attributes of housing condition, education, occupa- tion, per capita income, and ownership of consumer durables like a car, television, etc, in the household (Singh et al 1997d). Per capita income was calculated by dividing the total income of the family by the number of family members. Socioeco- nomic status (SES) 1 was the highest social class and SES 5 the lowest social class. The diagnosis of risk factors was based on available records, inquiry from the spouse, and concerned doctors, and the criteria of diagnosis were based on our earlier studies (Singh et al 1997a, 1997b). Tobacco consumption was determined based on criteria (Singh et al 1997c) used in other studies. Tobacco is consumed in various forms in India, such as cigarettes, beedi, the Indian pipe, in a Tobacco deaths in India raw or chewing form. People may consume tobacco in more than one form. Indian criteria classify subjects on the basis of smoking of cigarettes and pipes and do not adequately consider tobacco chewing, which has been duly considered by us (Singh et al 1997c). Statistical analysis We used the chi square test for the comparison of two groups. Only P values < 0.05 and two tailed t-tests were considered signiﬁcant in both sexes. Results We assessed the data with the help of verbal autopsy ques- tionnaire (Singh et al 2005) as suggested by the World Health Organisation (WHO) for countries where autopsy can not be done due to religious considerations. Table 1 shows the demographic data from the records and assessed by question- naire, among 2222 decedents, aged 25–64 years, expiring due to various causes. The mean age, sex, and body mass index were slightly higher among decedents than in the urban population reported in other studies from our town (Singh et al 1997a, 1997b). There was a three-fold higher prevalence of tobacco intake, among men compared with women, and all forms of tobacco consumption, ie, smoking, chewing, and smoking and chewing were more common among men than among women (Table 1). Tobacco consumption among decedents in relation to age groups revealed that tobacco use by men was signiﬁcantly more common in the age groups 35–44 years and >55 years of age. In comparison, women >55 years of age consumed tobacco more often compared with other age groups (Table 2). Table 3 shows that tobacco consumption did not signiﬁ- cantly differ among various social classes in men, although the prevalence was slightly lower among social class 4 men. Among women, tobacco consumption was signiﬁcantly more Table 1 Clinical data and tobacco consumption among decedents studied, based on records and assessment by questionnaire Clinical data Male (n = 1385) Female (n = 837) Mean (Standard deviation) Age 42.12** (13.02) 40.05 (11.60) Body weight 60.12** (6.24) 53.10 (6.95) Body mass index (kg/m) 23.18* (2.18) 23.65 (2.46) Tobacco consumption No. (%) No. (%) Smoking 277 20* 50 6.0 Tobacco chewing 415 30* 83 10 Smoking & tobacco chewing 623 45* 125 15 Note: *P < 0.05; **P < 001; P value was obtained by analysis of variance for comparison of means and by Chi square test (P < 0.02) by comparison of percentages of men and women. (Records of data were available only in 70%–80% of subjects.The rest were assessed by questioning the spouse and the lane doctors of the deceased). International Journal of COPD 2007:2(2) 179