UN PROGRAMMA COMPUTERIZZATO PER L'ANALISI DI STUDI COORTE DI MORTALITA NEGLI AMBIENTI DI LAVORO

This paper describes a computer program primarily developed to analyse occupational mortality studies. The program was written to calculate person-years of observation, observed and expected number of deaths and SMRs in the whole cohort and specified by age (five years), calendar period (five years), sex, cause and by other factors relevant to occupational epidemiology (type and duration of exposure, year and age first exposed, duration of follow up and latency). Data to be entered are: 1 - individual records for each member of the cohort containing identification number, sex, exact date of birth, complete work history (n types of job and for each date in and date out), date and cause(s) of death (four digit ICD classification); 2 - mortality rates of a reference population specified by age and time (five years), sex, and cause; 3 - options to select start and end point of the study, stratification factors, tables to be printed out. The maximum duration of a study is 40 years. There is no limit on the number of persons which can be entered. No more than ten causes of death and ten different jobs can be handled simultaneously in a single run. Any suitable set of reference rates can be used; at present Italy's national mortality 1944-1978 and two local mortality rates are available. Main program and subroutines are written in Fortran IV language.