Potential years of life lost

Potential Years of Life Lost (PYLL) is a summary measure of premature mortality which provides an explicit way of weighting deaths occurring at younger ages, which are, a priori, preventable. The calculation of PYLL involves summing up deaths occurring at each age and multiplying this with the number of remaining years to live up to a selected age limit. The limit of 75 years has been chosen for the calculations in OECD Health Statistics.

The selected ICD categories presented in the OECD Health Statistics database are detailed in an Excel file available for download, with codes according to the Tenth revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) along with codes from other ICD revisions used in the WHO Mortality Database.

Please refer to the Sources and Methods for detailed country-specific information.