Tag: diagnosis
Diagnostic Reflections
At the end of a long and storied career I reflect upon making a medical diagnosis. No reflection is one way to diagnose a vampire.
Mast Cell Activation Disorder – Yes, It’s Real
Mast Cell Activation Disorder is real, but there are a large number of fake diagnoses out there. How do you tell the difference?
How Do Doctors Learn to Diagnose, and Can Machines Learn to Do It Too?
Siddhartha Mukherjee weighs in on how doctors arrive at a diagnosis and how computers can assist but not replace them.
The ADHD Controversy
ADHD was already a controversial diagnosis; are Jerome Kagan's recent criticisms of it warranted?
Uncertainty in Medicine
Medicine is an uncertain business. It is an applied science, applying the results of basic science knowledge and clinical studies to patients who are individuals with differing heredity, environment, and history. It is commonly assumed that modern science-based doctors know what they are doing, but quite often they don’t know for certain. Different doctors interpret the same evidence differently; there is uncertainty...
The Fog of Medicine
I often get called on to be a diagnostician. The referring doctor is uncertain what is going on in the patient, often a fever of unknown origin, and they call me to help figure it out. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. Making the correct diagnosis is not easy, even after 35 years. The classic phrase is the fog of war, but...
IOM Recommends Replacing CFS with SEID
The Institute of Medicine has proposed replacing the terms chronic fatigue syndrome and myalgic encephalomyelitis with systemic exertion intolerance disease (SEID).
Diagnosis, Therapy and Evidence
When Dr. Novella recently wrote about plausibility in science-based medicine, one of our most assiduous commenters, Daedalus2u, added a very important point. The data are always right, but the explanations may be wrong. The idea of treating ulcers with antibiotics was not incompatible with any of the data about ulcers; it was only incompatible with the idea that ulcers were caused by...
Diagnostic Dilemmas
Sometimes diagnosis is straightforward. If a woman has missed several periods and has a big belly with a fetal heartbeat, it’s pretty easy to diagnose pregnancy. But most of the time diagnosis is much more difficult. Alzheimer’s can’t be diagnosed for sure until the patient dies and you do an autopsy. If only we had one of those Star Trek gadgets to...
Artificial Intelligence and Science-Based Medicine
AI tools in medicine are coming, and they can be powerful, but we have to manage how they are employed.