Simple test pinpoints your risk of death

updated 9:53 p.m. ET Feb. 14, 2006

CHICAGO - It sounds like a perfect parlor game for baby boomers suddenly confronting their own mortality: What are your chances of dying within four years?

Researchers have come up with 12 risk factors to try to answer that for people over age 50.

This is one game where you want a low score. Zero to 5 points says your risk of dying in four years is less than 4 percent. With 14 points, your risk rises to 64 percent.

Just being male gives you 2 points. So does having diabetes, being a smoker, and getting pooped trying to walk several blocks.

Points accrue with each four-year increment after age 60.

The test doesn’t ask what you eat, but it does ask if you can push a living room chair across the floor.

The quiz is designed “to try to help doctors and families get a firmer sense for what the future may hold,” to help plan health care accordingly, says lead author Dr. Sei Lee, a geriatrics researcher at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, who helped develop it.

“We know that patients and families want more prognostic information from doctors,” Lee said. “It’s a very natural human question of, 'What’s going to happen to me?’ We also know that doctors are very cautious about giving prognostic information because they don’t want to be wrong.”

This test is roughly 81 percent accurate and can give older people a reasonable idea of their survival chances, Lee and his colleagues say.

Of course, it isn’t foolproof. Other experts note it ignores family history and it’s much less meaningful for those at the young end of the spectrum.

The researchers even warn, Don’t try this at home, saying a doctor can help you put things into perspective.

“Even if somebody looks at their numbers and finds they have a 60 percent risk of death, there could be other mitigating factors,” said co-author and VA researcher Dr. Kenneth Covinsky.

There are things you can do to improve your chances, he notes, such as quitting smoking or taking up exercise.

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