How is time to death calculated in terminally I’ll patients?
In: 510
I’ll start with why doctors try to put a number on time to predicted death. One, patients generally want a range, even though that range can be significantly off. Moreover, to be eligible for hospice, you have to have a life expectancy of less than 6 months. Hospice is an amazing program for terminally ill patients for many reasons, but insurance won’t cover it without that.
It’s based on statistics. Cancers are staged based a many criteria including size, lymph node involvement, and metastasis. “Breast cancer” means very little to doctors. “T4a pN3a ER- PR- HER2- ductal carcinoma” gives information about the size, spread, and susceptibility to treatment options. With this information, doctors can reference a graph that gives a range of survival based on statistics. Usually you get an average survival along with a range that 95% of people with that stage survive
Outside of cancers, time until death is usually what I call SWAG: scientific wild ass guess. It’s partially based on stats, objective tests, and overall how shitty they look. Some diseases are better studied than others.
I’ve had patients outlive their diagnosis by years. I’ve had patients who were otherwise healthy come in with hip pain and died of metastatic breast cancer within 10 days. I’ve had patients I thought were 100% going to die overnight end up eventually walking out of the hospital. No one really knows, but stats help a little
Latest Answers