How to use the calculator
The calculator consists of three interactive parts that seek responses from the user. The first part asks information about the relevant personal history. The model requires ages of the person evaluating her risk at the time of occurrence of various relevant events. These ages are calculated internally using responses of dates of occurrence of those events as it is considered easier to remember or estimate the dates than the ages. Further, only year and month are required as the inclusion of days will not alter the calculations significantly. Enter responses by selecting appropriate choices from convenient drop-down menus. If the correct response to a month entry is not known you may guess and select an approximately correct response, or select the blank option to insert the median value. After answering all questions of Part I, click on the Continue button at the bottom of the page to proceed to Part II. The dates of birth of children is sought in the second part. Information entered on Part I is reproduced, before the presentation of additional questions. This is to enable any changes/corrections to the entries already made in Part I.
The number of childbirths and their spacing are factors that influence risk of cancers of
different receptor stauses differently and is typical of extra information sought by this
model over and above those normally required by other risk calculators. Other factors that
influence risk and included in this calculator relate to alcohol use, post-menopausal
hormones taken and changes in body mass index. The actual values used by the model for
calculation of risk are sought as input in Part III. Part III appears initially with
default values entered for the items required. On pressing Help estimate a
spread-sheet is provided to enable easy estimation of data required in this regard. Weight
at all ages from menarche till date, alchohol intake from age 18 till date and (if already
menopaused) post-menopausal hormones taken from menopause till date are to be entered.
As the entries are likely to be constant over a number of years an easy method to fill
the form has been devised. A drop-down menu selector with a list of all possible entries
is provided at the top of each column. Select a value and click on a row below to copy
the value into that row and all other rows below it. After completing all entries, click
Continue. The calculator produces an improved estimate of the data required by
Part III, populates the fields and re-presents Part III. At this stage the User can
press Help estimate again, or make changes to the estimated values directly.
Finally, click on Present Results. The calculator will compute and present the
risks for ER+/PR+, ER+/PR-, ER-/PR+, and ER-/PR- types of breast cancers relative to a
normal low-risk person. After trying out different entries for Part III data a user
might find it convenient to modify the gist representation of Part III data directly
and assess the risk patterns over ranges of likely data.
About Que sera
Que sera has been developed by
Professor K. Sundaram, Ph.D. based on
Colditz' model
The name Que sera meaning 'What will be?', derives inspiration from
Doris Day's classical movie song of the
1960's, consciously leaving out the second 'sera'. The author greatfully acknowledges
the creators of the QuigleyWiggly font that was used to create the logo.