title: The use and abuse of data: nomograms and talking to patients about clinical medicine.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To review the development of nomograms and consortia efforts applying these tools to model outcome predictions associated with radical cystectomy.
  
  
  RESULTS
  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.
authors.affiliation: Scott Department of Urology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA. slerner@bcm.tmc.edu
authors.forename: Seth P
authors.initials: SP
authors.lastname: Lerner
authors.forename: Bernard
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Bochner
authors.forename: Adam S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Kibel
mesh_terms: D015510:Clinical Medicine; D015653:Cystectomy; D018450:Disease Progression; D006801:Humans; D049451:Nomograms; D011379:Prognosis; D001749:Urinary Bladder Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000601:surgery*