Comorbidity Scores and Quantifying Competing Risks in the Vulnerable Patient

摘要

Accounting for comorbiditites is important for clinical prognosis. Comorbidities are diseases that are not directly related to an index condition of interest. For example, if a clinician is primarily interested in kidney cancer outcomes, comorbidities might include diabetes, heart disease, or obesity. The comorbidities might be as important as or more important than the index condition in predicting outcomes. Appropriately addressing the effect of comorbidities on outcomes is of particular importance in the context of diseases in which many tumors may be slow growing and unlikely to metastasize, such as early stage kidney cancer. It is possible that an individual with AJCC Stage I or II kidney cancer may be at a greater risk of dying from a comorbidity, such as heart disease, than from their kidney cancer.