Elaine-no one has to look at these sites but everyone has the right to know that they exist.The setting up of predict was in all the national newspapers so there can be no question of ‘taste’ in passing on the information.We are in this together are we not-we share information with one another.
Cheers Valx
Hi Ladies,
This site wont be for everyone but as Val says i quess we dont have to look, i remember when i was first DX my onc blurted out my chances of survival over 5yrs without me wanting to know,that was at my first appointment with him, back then my stats were 75% but all i could think about was the 25% of not being here so it did play on my mind because i wasnt ready to know i quess, 4 weeks earlier i was perfectly healthy (or so i though) and was going to live forever!
Ive since always resisted looking at Adjvant online or any of the others , but have just looked at this one and its come back better than my original stats , im more ready now to read stuff like this now i quess but can understand its not something everyone wants to know especialy in the early days .
At the end of the day no stats can tell what will happen to you personaly so i always try and remember that.
All the best
Linda x
Tina45 sums it all up really.
i think lot’s of people have looked ‘prognosis’ up everywhere,
ooooh to a life before technology and the I/Net maybe so we could just carry on with life and not worry about the future 
Could not resist a peek and was pleased to find that it said the same as my onc.
I’m with Lands, let’s just get on with life and make the most of every day. Just wish it would stop raining though as I can’t get out into the garden.
E
Thanks for this link. It looks like a good piece of work, but I do think the tool may be a bit more simplistic than Adjuvant or Cancermath as it takes account of fewer parameters, and some of the parameters have fewer values available, so is likely to be more crude in its estimates. For my wife’s case, it is certainly giving more pessimistic results than Cancermath (but so is Adjuvant).
The results given are also more crude, and don’t distinguish between cancer related and non-cancer related mortality. I have briefly read the research paper that is referenced, and I can’t tell whether the figures it gives include non-cancer related mortality or not.
I was surprised that the paper didn’t even mention the Cancermath work, which is much more in-depth and has been under development for quite a long time. I think the reviewers ought to have picked that up.
In general, whilst I think it is good to have as much information as possible, we really have to be careful take these predictors for what they are - rough models looking at overall survival rates for people who were diagnosed at least 10 years ago (in the case of the 10 year stats). I firmly believe that the reality is better than the prediction tools say.
I tried it out and thought it was a bit too simplistic compared to other tools of this type. I’ve tried Adjuvant Online and one of the others, both of which gave me a much higher chance of survival than this NHS Predict version. I just take stuff like this with a pinch of salt.
Hi i done the test but like life nothing comes with a long guarantee.Anything can happen we may die unrelated to cancer car crush bus hitting us etc just enjoy your life and at least we had a warning and we can make changes and enjoy our family & friends more than we would of if we never had cancer Jane x
I am interested in jansman’s comments as he obviously has been into this in depth.
I did a quick run thro’ on my own figures and it came out more optimistically than with Adjuvant and with what the oncologist gave me - so I think maybe I wasn’t putting in the right info.?
It all seemed over- simplified to me- can’t quite see why it’s supposed to be more accurate.
Jansman one of the things I did like was the way it separated cancer and non cancer related mortality.Click on the pictogram option and it is very clear.It is a lot easier to use than the other predictors so less stressful for those who dont want to input lots of info.They are all based om outdated figures anyway.someone dx today is likely to do better than someone dx 10/15 yrs ago.
I have tried them all and they are within a couple of % on 10 yr survival.
Vx
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Hi Horace. I couldn’t find the “pictogram option”. I do agree that the figures for recently diagnosed people are likely to be better than those indicated by these tools. I did find that, for us, Adjuvant and this new one are both more pessimistic than Cancermath.
I think xwelcomex’s point about Herceptin is very important. If we put 3 as the grade, and the cancer is HER2+, the HER2 over-expression is a reason (maybe even THE reason) for that level of aggressiveness, so Herceptin should improve the odds compared to what the calculator says.
Hi, on cancermath you have the option of the display being either graph, pie chart or pictograms, you can chose from a drop down menu under the graph. It will be interesting to see if the medical teams switch from using adjuvant to the predict tool. Both my onc & surgeon went into adjuvant in great detail when explaining treatment percentages.
Is it me? It is a bit late at night and I am tired, but when I put in my details, it said I had not completed all the info. I didn’t have chemo and you can’t input the patient’s name, so what did I do wrong, because I filled in everything else?
Ann x
Hi Ann,
It is a bit confusing at first, but it allows you to do a kind of ‘what if’ analysis if you were to have chemo so you need to choose one of the chemo options. Try it with one and then do it again with the other to see the difference. As you didn’t have chemo, like me, hopefully both results should confirm to you that it wouldn’t have made much difference to your 5 and 10 year survival prediction.
I found this very reassuring as my tumour was ER/PR positive, but decided to give up Tamoxifen due to the severity of the SEs and this tool tells me it would make less than 1% difference to my 5 and 10 year survival prediction so I know I made the right decision.
E x
Ah, thanks for the clarification Tina. I thought Horace was referring to the NHS one. Yes, I do like the CancerMath one best, although it still doesn’t factor in Herceptin. I’m probably influenced by the fact that it gives my lovely wife the best probability of survival. (A bit like blaming the met office for the weather, I know.)
Thanks, elsk.
Ann x
Hi Everyone,Why would anyone want to know their survival rate,do you not think we have to live through this enough.Would you want to know if you were going to get run over today out shopping??? err no.I have found this website really useful,and look at it all the time.I was diognosed May 2009,i feel well and happy and i have hair now yippee!!!To all of you out there carry on being strong live each day laugh and love alot and have lots of fun.Dont scare yourselves anymore its hard enough as it is.I would never ever go on there,my mum had BC 28 years ago and she is happy and loving life thats enough for me.Sam xx
Some do,some dont Topsey-for me knowledge is strength-but no-one has to look if they dont want to.
Stay well
love Vx
I agree with Horace, I prefer information. But having said that, the problem I have with the Predict tool is that it’s overly simplistic, doesn’t take account of many important factors, and could therefore be misleading and/or frightening for many people. I’m therefore surprised it has been published on the Web in this crude form.
Sarah x
Hi Cancermath doesnt ask for radiotherapy info - since everyone seems to get this, and it improves chance of non recurrence, why not ?