Calculating your life expectancy after spinal cord injury

[Wise Young]

http://www.LifeExpectancy.com/asp/sci/

I just found this site. You have to register (it is free) but if you enter your level of injury, date of injury, birthdate, whether or not you are ventilator dependent, sex, race, education and marital status, employment status at time of injury, and whether the injury was from a violent cause, it tells you how long you can expect to live!


Well, pretending that I had a C4 that occurred a year ago, it told me that I should expect to live another 11.7 years and to work 6.0 years. Seems sort of short to me.

[This message was edited by Wise Young on Apr 24, 2002 at 07:16 PM.]

[DA]

according to this i have 12 more years to live. looks like i won't
live long enough to see 4-ap get fda approved. http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/images/smilies/wink.gif


and i also used up my work. im quitting tomorrow.

[SCI-Nurse]

Keep in mind that the formula is no doubt based on information from the SCI Model Systems centers, which reports primarily AVERAGES. If you take good care of yourself, you are more likely to be at the high end rather than the low end (which would drag down the average).

I made up one for myself to just to test it. Note that you only get 25 "Free" calculations, I suppose after that you have to pay for the service.

(KLD)

[This message was edited by SCI-Nurse on Apr 24, 2002 at 10:08 PM.]

[quadfather]

The results provided have 2 flaws:

1. It's a median. That means you have a 50% chance of living longer than indicated.

2. It's based on historical data. Current and future medical advances will increase the liklihood of living longer than indicated.

[Wise Young]

quadfather, I agree.

I must admit that when I found this site last year, I was 52 years old. Well, if one adds 11.7 years to 52, I should expect a 50% chance of living till age 64. Incidentally, it is also based on my telling the program that I had spinal cord injury at age 51 (which is an older age to get an injury). Interestingly, it suggests that I would work 6.0 years despite my injury.

Well so much for statistics.

Wise.

[vic]

Wow it says i can expect to work another 25 years.. I was sure i would die from some stress related disease before that :-)

[andrew]

Statistics are another way of saying you are not certain. http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/images/smilies/biggrin.gif
Andrew http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/images/smilies/smile.gif

"You can stand me up at the gates of hell
But I won't back down"
Tom Petty