Doctors wrongly predicting how long teminally ill patients have left in half of all UK cases: analysis

Doctors wrongly predict how long terminally ill patients will survive in half of cases, new analysis claims.

It comes as those with less than 12 months to live would be allowed to end their lives under proposed changes to assisted dying laws presented to the UK Parliament this week.

The assisted dying Bill has raised concerns that people incorrectly told they have months left to live by doctors will choose to die prematurely.

Half of patients expected to die within six months to a year outlive those expectations, according to analysis of 16 years of medical research.

Out of 6495 occasions when doctors or nurses predicted a patient would die within a year, 3516 defied expectations and survived, according to The Telegraph.

Full details of the assisted dying Bill, put forward by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, are not due to be set out until the end of next month.

Although it is still some way from being finalised, MPs were told that it will allow terminally ill adults ‘subject to safeguards and protections, to request and be provided with assistance to end their own life’.

It is thought that the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill will apply to mentally competent adults with fewer than six months to live. However, a 12-month prognosis is also possible. They would be able to access assisted dying with the agreement of two doctors and a judge.

The Bill will be debated on November 29 and could then have its first vote. It will face further Commons votes before being sent to the Lords, meaning any law change would not be until next year at the earliest.

The new analysis reportedly highlights weaknesses in doctors’ prognoses, raising concerns from leading palliative care clinicians about estimates for length of life remaining.

The data has been extracted by Paddy Stone, emeritus professor of palliative and end of life care at University College London, from a systematic review he published in BMC Medicine in 2017.

The study collated more than 25,000 clinicians’ responses to the question: ‘Would you be surprised if this patient were to die in the next 6-12 months?’

Most doctors responded ‘Yes’, they would be surprised if the patient died. This was largely correct, with patients most often still alive at the end of this period.

When doctors answered ‘No’, meaning they would be surprised if the patient lived beyond six or 12 months, the patient reportedly defied expectations 54 per cent of the time.