Hospital and community mortality rates among the retarded.

The findings of McCurley et al. are generally replicated by this study. Community rates are usually lower than those of comparable institutional residents, except for convalescent hospitals used for the care of the profoundly retarded in the United States. Attention is drawn to the sharp mortality difference between ambulatory and non-ambulatory retarded individuals and the affect of the ability to walk can have on the estimation of mortality rates. The ambulation factor should be considered more routinely in future studies. Finally, a revision of the usual method of estimation of age at death was attempted. The utility of the method, similar to standardisation procedures widely used in demography, provides estimates which are more directly comparable between studies.