Uwe Güth, Christoph Junker, Marion Schafroth, Shaun McMillan, Andres R Schneeberger, Constanze Elfgen, Edouard Battegay, Rolf Weitkunat
Objectives: To evaluate the most recent developments of medical aid in dying (MAID) in Switzerland and to test the reliability of reporting this phenomenon in cause of death statistics. Methods: By reviewing the MAID cases between 2018 and 2020, we compared the diseases and conditions underlying MAID reported by the ICD-based statistics provided by the Swiss Federal Statistical Office (FSO, n = 3,623) and those provided by the largest right-to-die organization EXIT ( n = 2,680). Results: EXIT reported the motivations underlying the desire for death in a mixture of disease-specific and symptom-oriented categories; the latter including, for example, multimorbidity (26% of cases), and chronic pain (8%)...
2023: International Journal of Public Health