Forecasting the last seven days of life is harder than the final 24 hours; beyond that, things become shakier still
The writer is a science commentator On Friday the UK parliament will vote on whether terminally ill individuals with mental capacity can ask for medical help to hasten death. If the assisted dying bill passes, the country will move closer towards sanctioning state-assisted suicide, bringing it in line with countries such as Switzerland, Belgium and Canada. There are compelling arguments on both sides of this emotive issue and the result feels impossible to call.
One 2023 paper covering about 98,000 patients showed that clinicians were 74 per cent accurate in judging who would live for less than 14 days and 83 per cent accurate on who would survive more than a year. But that fell to 32 per cent when estimating those in the middle, likely to live “weeks” or “months”.
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