How do doctors determine the amount of time a terminally ill patient has left?
In: 330
It’s a guess/estimate based on how long other people in the same condition have lasted in the past.
We’ve been collecting data from past cases for a long time now, so doctors can consider “Latino man in his 60’s, drinks moderately, doesn’t smoke, current situation is stage 2 prostate cancer” and find the average amount of time someone of that description has typically survived for.
Sometimes the estimate is very wrong. My uncle with cerebral palsy lived to be nearly 80 when doctors said he’d be dead before 20. Stephen Hawking outlived his diagnosis by decades too. Sometimes the doctor estimates 5 years and they’re dead in 6 weeks too. Everyone’s different. The estimate from doctors is just an estimate, based on people in similar situations. But health is complicated, and there are always factors in each case that make estimates inaccurate.
Latest Answers