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Prognosis consists of stating future effects of Disease or Treatment
The Events can be Desirable like cure, relief or avoidable like complications, disability, death, faliure of the intervention and exorbitant unbearable costs.
All events, Desirable or avoidable must be stated in the Information section of the informed consent clearly stating the cause of each in terms of disease, Investigation or Treatment.
The chance (Probabilty) of each event must be stated based on evidence. Like chance of cure is 75%, Relapse 16% etc. based on verifiable lierature.
The attraction or avoidance feeling of the patient/relatives, towards the event is called Utility. It is quantified, amongst other techniques, by "Willingness to Pay" approach. How much are you willing to pay to avoid no voice after curative Laryngectomy for Laryngeal cancer as compared to Relatively ineffective and Toxic Radiotherapy which will preserve your voice.
The product of Probability and Utility is Expected Utility. It is negative for adverse events and positive for desirable ones. Sum of expected utility is used to determine the patients/ communities preference for a particular choice of investigation or intervention
The Analysis is called Decision Analysis.
If the time to an event is factored then Median Survival, 5 year survival or Kaplan Mier or Acturial Survival curves can be used to decide patient/community preference between investigations or interventions