How long have I got?

Speaker: Professor Paddy Stone

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Speaker: Professor Paddy Stone

Abstract:

Patients who are terminally ill, their families and the health care professionals looking after them frequently want to know how long such patients may have left to live.  Such information can allow patients time to prepare for the ends of their lives, to get their affairs in order and to achieve their preferred place of death. Accurate prognoses are also useful to healthcare professionals - helping them to plan services and prioritize caseloads. Unfortunately doctors' estimates of survival are unreliable and systematically over-optimistic. This talk will explore the ways in which the Marie Curie Palliative Care Research Department is trying to improve the process of prognostication for terminally ill patients including a description of on-going studies to validate prognostic tools; to understand the factors that influence clinical prognostication; and to understand how prognostic information is communicated to patients and their relatives.