The 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, thyro

The 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”.