Do we need more nomograms for predicting outcomes in patients with prostate cancer?

Access through your institution Buy or subscribe Men naturally ask lots of questions when they are diagnosed with clinically localized prostate cancer. Will this disease kill me? Do I need

treatment, now or in the future? If I treat the cancer, will it come back? Are there adverse effects of treatment, what are they, and how common are they? What will happen to me if I leave

the disease untreated? These questions are all perfectly natural for a man or his partner to ask and worry about. Men will ask everyone they can think of for answers, and often search in

books or on the internet for information. Partners can be even more obsessed with finding answers than the patients themselves. The answers are extremely important because they can drive

patient decision making. Although the answers to these questions are important, they are only predictions. None of these questions can be answered with certainty (e.g. you will live or die),

and definite future medical outcomes are practically never known for an individual patient. This uncertainty is a fact of life, much like whether or not it will rain tomorrow or whether or

not the stock market will go up. Life is full of predictions. Moreover, each patient has a different prognosis and likelihood of particular outcomes, which requires some customization of the

answers to these questions. We cannot answer individual patients' questions with a one-size-fits-all solution. Patient heterogeneity should be taken into account when determining

predictions for an individual patient. This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution ACCESS OPTIONS Access through your institution Subscribe to this journal Receive

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REFERENCES * Kattan MW (2003) Nomograms are superior to staging and risk grouping systems for identifying high-risk patients: preoperative application in prostate cancer. _Curr Opin Urol_

13: 111–116 Article  Google Scholar  * Specht MC _ et al_. (2005) Predicting nonsentinel node status after positive sentinel lymph biopsy for breast cancer: clinicians versus nomogram. _Ann

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to”. _JAMA_ 290: 98–104 Article  Google Scholar  * Ross RW and Kantoff PW (2007) Predicting outcomes in prostate cancer: how many more nomograms do we need? _J Clin Oncol_ 25: 3563–3564

Article  Google Scholar  * Kattan MW : Should I use this nomogram? _BJU Int_, in press Download references AUTHOR INFORMATION Author notes * Department of Quantitative Health Sciences,

Cleveland Clinic, 9500 Euclid/Wb4, Cleveland, OH 44195, USA [email protected] AUTHORS AND AFFILIATIONS * and Chairman of the Department of Quantitative Health Sciences at the Cleveland Clinic,

MW Kattan is Professor of Medicine, Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA., Michael W Kattan

Authors * Michael W Kattan View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar ETHICS DECLARATIONS COMPETING INTERESTS The author declares no competing

financial interests. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION SUPPLEMENTARY FIGURE 1 (DOC 73 KB) RIGHTS AND PERMISSIONS Reprints and permissions ABOUT THIS ARTICLE CITE THIS ARTICLE Kattan, M. Do we need

more nomograms for predicting outcomes in patients with prostate cancer?. _Nat Rev Urol_ 5, 366–367 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/ncpuro1128 Download citation * Received: 14 February 2008

* Accepted: 09 April 2008 * Published: 27 May 2008 * Issue Date: July 2008 * DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ncpuro1128 SHARE THIS ARTICLE Anyone you share the following link with will be able

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