3 ms·
Other numbers are more meaningful than "died of cancer" - Total time with cancer - including time without symptoms - Total time affected by cancer as a diseas
by csours 3y ago
Other numbers are more meaningful than "died of cancer"
- Total time with cancer - including time without symptoms
- Total time affected by cancer as a disease - time with symptoms
- Total lifespan lost - how young did a person die of the disease
There's probably no way to really know #1, #2 is hard to gather information on, #3 is more do-able.
- landemva 3y agoWhy are 1 and 2 more meaningful?
- maratc 3y agoThe relevant measurement is called QALY, or quality adjusted life years. It is meant to be a meaningful representation of a disease burden. As an example, thyroid cancer is hardly curable, but a common remedy is to remove the thyroid and to rely on medications going forward. Somebody in this condition can have a long quality life otherwise. Pancreatic cancer, on the other way, has very low survival rate, so it cuts a lot of QALYs out of a person’s life. It would be great if the authors would quantify their findings in QALY, as in e.g. “while we have previously believed that the low dose radiation results in a loss of x days (QALY wise), we now believe that number to be 2x days”.