Prognostic information for people with MS: Impossible or inevitable?
Delivering prognostic information is a challenging issue in medicine and has been largely neglected in the past. A major reason has been a suspected nocebo effect of pessimistic estimates, although this is largely unproven. Among people with multiple sclerosis (MS), there is a strong unmet need to receive long-term prognostic information. This viewpoint discusses reasons for this blind spot in physicians' attitude, foremost among which is the uncertainty of prognostic estimates. Possible strategies to move forward include tools to identify matching patients from large well-defined databases, to deliver an evidence-based individualized estimate of long-term prognosis, and its confidence interval, in a clinical setting.
['Heesen|Christoph|C|0000-0001-8131-9467', 'Scalfari|Antonio|A|', 'Galea|Ian|I|']
D000328:Adult D002908:Chronic Disease D058015:Health Communication D006801:Humans D009103:Multiple Sclerosis D010817:Physician-Patient Relations D011379:Prognosis D013997:Time Factors D014342:Truth Disclosure
Prognosis patient information risk communication