The use and abuse of data: nomograms and talking to patients about clinical medicine.

Overview

OBJECTIVE: To review the development of nomograms and consortia efforts applying these tools to model outcome predictions associated with radical cystectomy. FINDINGS: Nomograms have been developed that provide individualized prediction of recurrence and survival following radical cystectomy, which provide significant improvement in predictive accuracy over tradition TNM staging. CONCLUSIONS: Nomograms provide individualized risk assessment and outperform expert physician and conventional models used to predict outcome. Addition of biologic markers may improve predictive capability and improve the clinical utility of these valuable tools.