Prognosis

The prognosis depends on the form of the disease. Favorable is a rapid onset and an age under 35 years, as well as sensory and visual disturbances, which however will completely regress. Unfavorable for the prognosis is an age over 40 years, paralysis and insecure gait as the first complaints. After the onset of the disease, life expectancy is usually only 25 to 30 years with unfavorable forms of the disease, but can also remain unchanged with favorable forms of the disease.

Forms of progression

The course of multiple sclerosis can be quite different:

Multiple sclerosis is a chronic, incurable disease. This means that although the course of multiple sclerosis can be influenced by medication and appropriate therapy, the patient must live with the disease for a lifetime. Overall, the course of multiple sclerosis can be relapsing, which means that there are long periods in which the patient does not even notice that he or she is suffering from the disease.

On the other hand, there is the chronic progressive form. Usually the disease starts with recurrent attacks and then at some point passes over into the chronic disease. If an acute relapse then occurs again, the patient has the various typical symptoms of multiple sclerosis.

The course of multiple sclerosis is very individual for each patient. Usually the disease begins at a very young age, often patients are around 20-30 years old. The initial course of multiple sclerosis is usually relapsing, whereby a relapse can last from a few days to several weeks.

The repeated occurrence of the relapses is also very individual. In most cases, months lie between the individual relapses, whereby the course of the multiple sclerosis relapses can be positively influenced by adequate therapy. This can then lead to a patient being symptom-free for years until a new attack occurs.

This is the classic course of multiple sclerosis and occurs in relapses in about 80% of all patients. In 20% of all patients, however, a chronic progressive course occurs. In this course of multiple sclerosis there are no recurrent attacks but the patient suffers from the symptoms of multiple sclerosis for the entire time, which then get worse and worse.

In general, the course of multiple sclerosis can be influenced well by medication, but it cannot be stopped. Thus, after years of illness, physical impairments and disabilities often occur later. Overall, it is assumed that patients without treatment will not have severe disabilities after 15 years. Since the course of multiple sclerosis is positively influenced by adequate therapy, the negative effects of the disease can be delayed very far.