Introduction:

One of the greatest concerns that burdens man is the interest in diseases and how to deal with them.

Objective:

To present theoretical elements that highlight the importance of prognosis within the clinical method.

Methods:

A bibliographic review was carried out on the prognosis of sick patients with certain entity, using the Google Academic search engine. The descriptors used were clinical method, prognosis, prognostic estimation, prediction. In addition, internal medicine textbooks and SciELO database of the Virtual Health Library were used.

Discussion:

The identification of factors capable of influencing the prognosis of a disease is of utmost importance for daily clinical activity. On the one hand, because it facilitates decision-making regarding diagnostic procedures or treatments and, on the other, because knowing the possible evolution of specific patients will allow to inform patients on the clinical course of their disease.

Conclusions:

Prognosis and predictive scales are useful in the health-disease process and part of the clinical method. Well-used technological development enables more accurate predictions, but they are not error-free. The clinical method and the technological revolution go in a continuous progress where neither replaces the other but both, as in a dialectical binomial, are on the way to growth.

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