Table 1.

Characteristics and medical history of 58 cancer patients who died from euthanasia in the University Medical Center Utrecht between 1992 and 1999 and 114 control cancer patients who died from natural causes. Values are numbers (percentages) unless specified otherwise

	Cause of death
Characteristics	Euthanasia (n=58)	Natural death (n=114)
Female	37/58 (64)	70/114 (61)
Mean (95% CI) age at death (years)	61 (58 to 64)	62 (60 to 64)
Geometric mean (95% CI) length of illness (months)	15 (10 to 22)	10 (7 to 13)
Cancer untreatable at first diagnosis	8/58 (14)	23/114 (20)
Geometric mean (95% CI) period between date questionnaire sent out and date of death (months)	35 (29 to 43)	39 (34 to 43)