How do doctors make predictions of how long someone will live or if they’ll ever walk normally again?

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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

30 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

I am a doctor. Have been for 10+ years. I have maybe a handful of times given someone a prognosis of when they will die, almost always only when they are already on their deathbed. And the estimate is extremely vague, like “within a few days or weeks”, because you cannot know. I never say “you have 6 months to live” or whatever specific like that, because that’s just guessing, and you are much more likely to be wrong than right. I hate it when other docs do this, but fortunately most I work with do not do it either.

I have seen enough prognoses go wildly wrong to know better than to make glorified guesses.

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