ESRD Patients Have Different Prognostic Expectations than their Doctors.

Eighty-one percent of 62 seriously ill patients from two Boston area dialysis centers thought they had at least a 90% chance of being alive in 1 year, while nephrologists were this optimistic for only 25% of the patients. Given the hypothetical scenario where patients asked their nephrologists for an estimate of their prognosis, more than half the time the doctors said they would tell the patient they could not give an estimate. More than a third of the time patients thought they were transplant candidates when nephrologists thought they were not. Thefindings are published in JAMA.