It shouldn’t be a surprise that receiving a prognosis for MS is never a good thing, but it should be known that multiple sclerosis does not equate to a lessened life expectancy. Multiple sclerosis isn’t actually a fatal disease, meaning that your life expectancy will be highly comparable to any other persons. It is never Ms that causes people to die – rather, it is the illnesses that everyone experiences, so you should be aware that the prognosis for longer lifetimes is generally good. There’s a lot more to prognoses related to MS, however – in this article we cover them to give you a better understanding of what to expect.
Factoring in symptom progression and other factors
When you receive your multiple sclerosis prognosis, you might feel your mood decrease for some time, and that’s perfectly normal. Although there will be the need to manage the issues that are invariably linked with multiple sclerosis – such as pain, discomfort, and inconvenience – most people with the condition will never become severely disabled in their lifetime. Much of the physical degradation that occurs takes many years to develop, and although it can be severely debilitating for some, approximately two-thirds of people diagnosed with MS are able to walk without a wheelchair two decades after their initial diagnosis. If people do have issues with physical deterioration, they will still be able to remain mobile through the use of things like crutches or cane, but if the condition causes these options to not remain possible, then an electric scooter or wheelchair still remain options. As it is so difficult to truly know how symptoms will affect each individual person, preparing for such degradation is not really possible. There are a few factors, however, that can determine whether you might be more at risk. These include you being over the age of 40 at the initial onset of symptoms, if initial symptoms affect several parts of your body and if initial symptoms affect mental functioning, urinary control, or motor control.
Symptom progression, complications and outlook
For multiple sclerosis, prognosis is often related to the kind of MS that a person has. For example, primary progressive multiple sclerosis (PPMS) is involves steady decline in function over the individual’s lifetime without relapses or remissions (although again, every case will be unique to some degree). Generally, though, people can be expected to do better overall if they have minimal symptom attacks in the years following their initial diagnosis, find that a longer amount of time passes between attacks, they experience complete recovery from any attacks they experience, if they have symptoms related to sensory problems (these include tingling, vision loss and numbness) or if any neurological exams they undertake look relatively normal five years after the initial diagnosis. If there is an obvious chance that a patient’s outlook is going to be impacted in some way, their doctor will usually inform them in advance that their condition will likely worsen.
How to manage quality of life
Although it is true that the length of a person’s life with multiple sclerosis will often be the same as a non-sufferer, it is usually the quality of life that is affected more than anything. Managing symptoms can be difficult for someone with multiple sclerosis, but with enough selfcare, a full life can still very much be led.