Abstract
Recently in Japan, it is no rare matter telling the name of disease to advanced cancer patients. But on the other hand many health care providers do not feel they have sufficient knowledge of a patients course of disease to accurately predict a prognosis. How do we reply when a patient asks about his/her prognosis? We are afraid of making them hopeless, so we may be unclear in our explanations or tend to modify the truth. But they have a right to know the truth. In addition, it is important knowing prognosis for that they can arrange good death by themselves. They can prepare for it by knowing prognosis. An indicator we can use for prognosis is the survival curve. The survival curve is made from the data of lung cancer patients diagnosed in our hospital for the last ten years. It is classified by tissue type and stage. By using the ten-year survival curve, we can give patients a rough outlook of their prognosis. We knew a patient who arranged good death by himself after he knew his prognosis by this way. We think the use of the survival curve to tell a patient his/her prognosis is of significant value to consider.
