Analysis of Canadian ophthalmologists' age of death between 2000 and 2023: a comparative retrospective cross-sectional study.

Abstract

Objective: The objective of this study is to assess the lifespan of ophthalmologists in Canada relative to that of other Canadian physicians and surgeons.

Methods: In December 2023, obituaries published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) from 2000 to 2023 were manually collected. A Python program was created to collect age at death, physician speciality, and year of death from each obituary. The full methodology is described in our pilot study [1]. A univariate general linear model was employed to evaluate the relationship between medical speciality and average age of death. Model performance was assessed using the coefficient of determination (R²). Estimated marginal means were computed to provide estimates for the age of death for each cohort. The three speciality categories of surgeons (excluding ophthalmologists), ophthalmologists, and all other physicians (excluding surgeons and ophthalmologists) were compared in a pairwise manner. A Bonferroni correction was applied to the data for statistical rigour. Significance was defined as p < 0.05.

Results: In total, 2645 physicians were included in the analysis: 312 surgeons (excluding ophthalmologists), 109 ophthalmologists, and 2224 physicians in other specialities (excluding physicians and ophthalmologists). Surgeons, on average, lived approximately 4 years longer than non-surgical physicians (p < 0.001) and 2 years longer than ophthalmologists (p = 0.620). Ophthalmologists lived approximately 3 years longer than non-surgical physicians, though this was not statistically significant (p = 0.122).