BMJ  2003;327 (26 July), doi:10.1136/bmj.327.7408.0

Doctors overestimate survival

Doctors know when cancer patients are approaching death, even if their predictions of time till death are inaccurate. Glare and colleagues (p 195) conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of eight studies that assessed the accuracy of doctors' survival predictions. They found that doctors often overestimate the survival of terminally ill cancer patients and are wrong by more than a month a quarter of the time. Predictions were more accurate closer to death. However, doctors' predictions were reliable, being closely correlated with survival over the next six months. The authors say that doctors need to be aware of their tendency to overestimate survival.

CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Article

A systematic review of physicians' survival predictions in terminally ill cancer patients

Paul Glare, Kiran Virik, Mark Jones, Malcolm Hudson, Steffen Eychmuller, John Simes, and Nicholas Christakis
BMJ 2003 327: 195. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]