Mental Health
Anxiety: When Worry Becomes an Illness
Anxiety is a real illness with real physical symptoms, and it responds to treatment. What helps, what makes it worse, and why alprazolam is the wrong first answer.
29 Aug 202612 min read
Prognosis
Pronounced prog-NOH-sis
Also known as Outlook
A prognosis is the expected course of a condition — how it is likely to develop and what the chances of recovery are. It is a statement about probability across many people, not a prediction about one.
A prognosis is built from what has happened to large numbers of people with the same condition, adjusted for the things known to change the outcome — stage, age, other illnesses, how the condition has behaved so far, and how it responds to treatment. It answers a different question from the diagnosis: not what this is, but what it is likely to do.
Because it comes from populations, it carries genuine uncertainty for any individual. A figure such as a five-year survival rate describes a group; it does not tell a particular person what will happen to them, and it is usually based on people treated some years ago, before the current treatments existed.
Prognosis is not fixed. It is revised as a condition responds or fails to respond, which is why an early estimate should be understood as a starting position rather than a settled fact — and why , relapse and response to treatment all change it.
Where this comes up
Ophthalmology
Diabetic Retinopathy: The Eye Damage You Cannot Feel
Diabetes damages the retina silently for years before sight changes at all. What the yearly eye check looks for, what the stages mean, and what treatment can still save.
27 Aug 202613 min read
Dermatology
Eczema: Controlling the Itch and Keeping the Skin Barrier Intact
Eczema is a leaky skin barrier plus an over-reactive immune system. Moisturiser is the treatment, not the afterthought — and steroid creams are safer than most people fear.
25 Aug 20269 min read
Related terms
- Differential diagnosisDifferentials, The list of possibilitiesA differential diagnosis is the list of conditions that could explain a person's symptoms, ranked by likelihood and by danger. It is how a doctor thinks before a diagnosis is reached, and the reason questions and tests follow the order they do.
- RemissionRemission means the signs and symptoms of a disease have reduced or disappeared. It is not the same as cure — the condition may still be present and can return.
- MalignantCancerousMalignant describes a growth that can invade the tissue around it and spread to other parts of the body. It is the opposite of benign, which stays where it started.
- BenignNon-cancerous, Not malignantBenign describes a growth or a finding that is not cancer: it stays where it started, does not invade surrounding tissue and does not spread elsewhere in the body. Benign is not always the same as harmless.
- ScreeningScreening testScreening is testing people who feel well, to find a condition earlier than symptoms would. It is only worth doing when finding the condition early genuinely changes what happens next.
- ChronicLong-term, Long-standingChronic means long-lasting — a condition that has persisted for months or years and is managed over time rather than cured in a course. It is the opposite of acute, and it says nothing at all about how severe something is.