Predicting survival in patients with advanced disease
Prognostication is an important part of care planning. It is also an essential skill to assist patients and their families in care and life planning. Every day, clinicians depend on their experience, knowledge, current research, and models to make prognostic estimates, which are the foundation of many clinical decisions. This chapter reviews current research and understanding about how clinicians formulate and utilize prognostic estimates in clinical settings. Palliative care clinicians must understand prognosis research since it informs individual clinical decisions as well as research design, policy development, and service composition. While no prognostic model is universal, this chapter will prepare clinicians to make the best use of the existing data in prognosis science. Limitations of prognostic methods and the future of predictive analytics will also be explored.