Table 1.

Characteristics of physician-assisted deaths and all other deaths in Flanders, Belgium, from June to November 2007

Characteristic	Physician-assisted deaths; weighted %*		p value‡	All other deaths, %*n = 3415
	With patient’s explicit request†n = 142	Without patient’s explicit request n = 66
% of all deaths (weighted*)	2.0	1.8		–
Sex, male	61.3	46.2	0.09	49.6
Age, yr			< 0.001
1–64	37.0	8.2		17.0
65–79	42.6	39.1		32.4
≥ 80	20.4	52.7		50.6
Cause of death			< 0.001
Cardiovascular disease	3.8	37.5		34.3
Malignant disease	80.2	32.4		26.6
Respiratory disease	4.7	10.8		12.2
Disease of the nervous system	7.2	3.6		3.5
Other disease	4.0	15.6		23.4
Place of death			< 0.001
At home	50.3	18.7		23.1
Hospital	41.9	67.1		49.6
Care home	3.4	12.5		23.1
Other	4.3	1.6		4.1
Type of physician			0.001
General practitioner	60.1	32.3		43.4
Clinical specialist	39.7	66.5		50.2
Other	0.2	1.2		6.4

^*Percentages are weighted to correct for the disproportionate stratification of deaths and for differences in the distribution of patient characteristics (sex, age, province in which death occurred, place of death and cause of death) between study sample and all deaths. Percentages may not total 100 because of rounding. The discrepancy between the number of deaths and the weighted percentage is due to the oversampling of euthanasia cases in the sampling method.

^†Euthanasia and assisted suicide.

^‡Calculated using Fisher exact test, for comparison between physician-assisted death with and without explicit request from the patient.