Eye Donation From Individuals Receiving Medical Assistance in Dying: Retrospective Chart Review of the Eye Bank of Canada (Ontario Division)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
PURPOSE: In Canada, Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) became a legal option for patients in 2016. The characteristics of MAiD donors, specifically for ocular tissue transplantation, have not been studied. The goal of this study was to explore the demographics and health status of these individuals. METHODS: A retrospective chart review of MAiD donors from the Eye Bank of Canada (Ontario Division) from January 2019 to March 2024 was conducted. Variables recorded included demographics, medical status, mechanism of death, consent and referral process, and tissue utilization. RESULTS: There were 475 eye donors (6.1% of all eye donors) who underwent the MAiD provision. The average age of donors was 70 years (SD: 5.42), and 50.5% (240/475) were male. Cancer was the most common mechanism of death, in 70% (332) of cases. First-person consent was obtained only 35% (164/474) of the time for ocular tissue donation, and 90% of donors (428/475) were referred from hospitals. Sixty-three percent of eyes were eligible for transplantation, while 37% were eligible for research and training. The most common surgical indication for transplant was endothelial dystrophies/failure (35%, 167/484). CONCLUSIONS: This study highlights the unique characteristics of eye donors who chose the MAiD provision. Hospitals made up 90% of MAiD referrals, and only 35% of MAiD donors consented on their own behalf. Efforts should be made to expand referrals for MAiD donation from nonhospital organizations. Furthermore, once MAiD eligibility has been determined, support should be provided to health care providers to navigate difficult discussions around donation.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".