Remove Dehydration Remove Hospice Remove Outcomes
article thumbnail

Friday Reflection 43: The Absence of Reassuring Counterfactuals in Clinical Medicine

Sensible Medicine

KN is a 90-year-old man I visit at an inpatient hospice. When the medical outcomes of my patients are bad, I am sometimes haunted by the lack of a counterfactual. Sitting with him in hospice I wonder whether, if we had treated him, he’d be home, cancer free, with years left to live. Two years later, I am not so sure.

Hospice 97