I was rewatching an old video on YouTube and the guy was able to walk again after 10 months of practicing yoga and losing 140 lbs. If no one on earth can exactly predict when someone will die or if they’ll be able to walk again, how and why do doctors come up with these predictions?
https://youtu.be/qX9FSZJu448
In: Mathematics
I am a surgeon.
The best answer I can give you is similar to the others, but i will try to expand on it
For conditions that are common, for example cancer, there are thousands and thousands of data points for patients. Age, stage and grade of tumour, comorbidities, spread to lymph nodes metastatic disease, etc. These factors often interact in complex ways, but some very smart people have created models and risk calculators to help with predictions. For cancer, most predictions are made based on median survival. This refers to the amount of time passing where half the patients are still expected to be alive.
As an example (skip to the end if you’re not interested) a risk calculator exists for patients with metastatic kidney cancer. It has 5 risk factors. If you have none of them, median survival in 20 months. One or two, 10 months, and 3 or more, 4 months. This information can help patients make decisions about which treatments they are interested in and how aggressively they want to fight their disease. But as I mentioned above, this is median survival, not a crystal ball that applies perfectly to you as a person.
Physicians are often poor at having these conversations for a number of reasons that I would be happy to get into in a separate response if anyone is interested. I can also expand if you would like. But hopefully that serves as an introductory answer to your question.
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