Dr. Faith Fitzgerald once quipped that prognostic modeling is the “punctilious quantification of the amorphous.”  She has a point.  Prognosis is inherently uncertain.  As Alex Lee says on our podcast today, all prognostic models will be wrong (in some circumstances and for some patients); our job is to make prognostic models that are clinically useful.  As Sei Lee notes, the argument for developing prognostic models has won the day, and we increasingly use prognostic scores in clinical decision making.  What makes prognostic models for mortality different from models used for anticoagulation or risk of renal injury?  James Deardorff replies that there is something inherently different about predicting mortality.  Death is different.  For some reason clinicians who might be perfectly comfortable using an anticoagulation risk calculator might be skeptical of a mortality risk calculator (see this recent terrific JAMA IM study from Nancy Shoenborn on this issue).  And yet, the only thing that may be worse than a prognostic calculator is a clinician relying solely on their clinical intuition.

Today our guests Alex Lee, James Deardorff, and Sei Lee, talk to us about the uses, limitations, and clinical use cases for prognostic models.  As a springboard for this conversation we discuss new prognostic models developed to predict (simultaneously) mortality, disability, and mobility impairment (Alex Lee first author, JAGS) and mortality for people with dementia residing in the community (James Deardorff first author, JAMA IM).  

Both new models are now available and free to use on ePrognosis.  

And Sei and Eric reminisce about slow dancing to “Forever Young” by Alphaville in their teenage years.

Enjoy!

-AlexSmithMD