Prognosis is a doctor’s best guess of a patient’s likely outcome based on clinical studies and experience. It can help determine treatment, but is not always accurate. Tools like the APACHE II scale can predict mortality. Even minor illnesses can benefit from a prognosis to determine treatment effectiveness.
Prognosis comes from ancient Greek and can be translated into anticipation or foreknowledge. It can sometimes be confused with the word diagnosis, which means giving a name to a person’s state of health or deciding what ailments they suffer from. When a doctor provides a prognosis, they typically use the best resources they have, such as clinical studies and previous experience treating a disease, to tell a patient what they can expect from a disease and the likelihood of surviving the disease. A prognosis can help patients determine the types of treatments they should take to treat various diseases.
A prognosis is not based solely on empirical scientific data. It’s really a doctor’s best guess, which may be driven in part by how other people have responded to the same disease. When a disease is rare or not frequently studied, it is not always possible to determine survival or outcome. With fatal diseases, doctors can provide ranges of possible dates by which they expect a patient will not live, and there is some concern about prognoses when diseases could be but are not always fatal. If attitude makes a difference in recovery, you don’t want patients to assume they can’t survive a dangerous disease.
When a person is given a prognosis, it is wise to remember that this is the best guess based on the doctor’s previous experience or knowledge. Like many prediction methods, it has an element of randomness and does not fully account for how a person will respond to illness. On the other hand, some common illnesses, especially those that prove fatal, may not be subject to much guesswork about the final outcome.
Doctors use some scientific tools to predict the likelihood of death in seriously ill people. One scale, the APACHE II scale, is quite effective at predicting mortality, especially within a week of expected death. This scale can be used as a prognostic tool to determine the types of treatment that should be given or withheld and to help inform the family that death is likely or imminent.
Even with minor illnesses, a prognosis can prove helpful. A patient with sore throat may be told that her symptoms should resolve within a few days of starting antibiotic treatment. If symptoms persist beyond the point where the doctor predicted the patient would improve, this may indicate that a different treatment is needed. When you get little prognoses like these for little illnesses, it’s a good idea to understand when you expect to get better. That way, you can contact your doctor if treatment doesn’t seem to be working.
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