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I too was on the receiving end of that talk. Are statistics so really so difficult that doctors cannot give them to patients? Here's a Kaplan-Meier curve for

by MarkMc 13y ago

I too was on the receiving end of that talk. Are statistics so really so difficult that doctors cannot give them to patients? Here's a Kaplan-Meier curve for patients with Leukaemia: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3202035/figure/F1/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3202035/figure/F... Would it really be so difficult to say, "We estimate you have a 50% chance of being alive in 18 months, and a 25% chance of being alive in 10 years. But don't give up hope because that will reduce your chances."

thomasz 13y ago
The problem with the Kaplan-Meier curve is that most of the time, they represents figures about the whole patient population, but depending on the disease, there are extreme differences between stages and possibly dozens of cytogenetic factors. AML 5 year survival can be as low as ~15% and as high as ~70%. For Melanoma patients, it ranges between 100% (in situ) and 10% (stage IV).