When To Research Medical Symptoms And Diagnoses

Short answer is yes, a person - be it a patient or not - should educate oneself. There should be a balance between how much knowledge one gathers and how they use it.

Excuse the long answer....

I see this in two parts...
1.
General knowledge
- Reading about existing illnesses, diseases, treatments, home remedies will help...

Say a couple has a first-born, knowledge about the vaccinations chart will help in asking questions when they go for a doctor' visit. Two/three decades back some vaccinations did not even exist. We have way too much now. Knowledge will help in questioning and understanding a professional's POV.

Or learning about a simple home remedy like ginger/lemon tea for a bachelor will save time from visiting the doctor often. Too many medications for simple problems are not good.

Or read about a virus spreading in certain places to take precautions.


2.
In-depth research about a certain illnesses
-
A person gets diagnosed with what could be fatal in a few years or something incurable that has drugs in clinical trial phases.
Typical example is cancer or say parkinson's disease. Research is very much needed here along with the professional's opinion. Research could even lead to the patient finding a never tried trial and bringing it to the doctor's attention.

- One can read professional medical websites
- Read blogs written based on personal experience
- Attend courses/seminars in respective areas to gather information

- Being open to the current way of things. There is only a 50-50 chance of what we read working for us or against us.
Even professionals misdiagnose illnesses. When in doubt, they try a certain drug - there is always a probability of it working or not. If it doesn't work, they try something else.

 

Any medical condition for which there is not a proven clinical test or biomarker carries an added level of difficulty. If it is a pediatric issue, especially with infants or toddlers, then that adds yet another layer of complexity. Behavioral diagnoses are extraordinarily difficult.

This is true, especially when looking for a diagnosis based on non-invasive technology. If more complex procedures are involved, decision-making becomes difficult for doctor, patient, parent and care-givers.

 

Continuing from Post #18:

Understanding Risk
We see reports of some medical finding or the other every single day - red wine is good for you because of the anti-aging properties of resveratrol, then again red wine is bad for you because it elevates risk of some cancers. Coffee is good for you, hot coffee is bad for you. Theobromine is good for you, chocolate is bad for you. Keytruda (Merck) is a wonder drug because former president Jimmy Carter is still alive despite stage 4 metastatic melanoma that had already spread to the brain at the time of diagnosis. Opdivo (Bristol-Myers-Squibb), which is designed to do more or less the same thing, is not as good (you'd have heard about this if you had been following the stock prices in the past day or two!). And so it goes.

The results of almost any study you might read about are expressed in terms of "absolute risk" or as an increase or decrease in "relative risk". The efficacy of therapeutic intervention is likewise expressed in terms of relative risk or benefit in comparison to another treatment or placebo. However, most people do not have a clue about how to interpret this information. If you are to do effective research about your medical options, it is important to understand basic risk statistics. This is quite easy to do. If you have the slightest quantitative training, it is trivial. If you are a poet, then it's an investment of an hour or so, tops. It is worth that effort if it motivates you to ask one question every time you see such a report: "Increased/decreased risk relative to what?"

For good tutorials on absolute and relative risk, see:
Absolute vs. Relative Risk: What Does Percentage Risk Really Mean?
Increasing or Decreasing Risk: Examples
Understanding Risk
Risk (PDF with more detail)

All the links above say more or less the same thing with different examples. For your homework, pick any one that suits your fancy!

More later.

 

A fitting question is how is that self-didactic patient researching on the web. Is he tapping into authorised virtual help or celebratory publications? Or just vaguely typing "I have abdominal pain" and scanning news for listings of endemic ailments in his locality. How search-savvy are these self-equipped patients?

Internet is making a mickey of the gullible and paranoia of the rest. This incident made headlines back in May 2015.

Full story link: Fake- chocolate helps weight loss
Rundown: Why A Journalist Scammed The Media Into Spreading Bad Chocolate Science

You may be interested to read how John Bohannon pulled a fast one on public with his chocolate hoax. That article highlights few important things.

(1) How research can be manipulated.
(2) How media can abet in spreading such falsified and tampered publication
(3) How public can be fooled into believing fake news as breakthrough.

This thread is fronted as "medical diagnose" but I just lightly pinned something more fundamental in searching medical facts on what type of articles and sites lend credence which is more important. My jaw drops every time I see a "Daily Mail" link in some very scientific and medical advice here at IL.

 

Reminds me of the time I went to a renowned paediatrician in India. I asked her some questions about a certain therapy. She googled something right in front of me and read the answer to me.

 

No, I meant that in a "Physics for Poets" sense - i.e. even if you do not have any quantitative training whatsoever or even if you are a poet intimidated by fractions (surprisingly common in the US), one hour is all you need to get up to speed with basic risk statistics, and one of those links should suffice. For people who are more comfortable with numbers, but unfamiliar with the notions implicit in percentage-risk statements, all one needs is the time to read the page, a trivial effort. If you don't understand this simple idea, then all googling for medical information will be in vain, because you won't be able to contextualize for your specific case what the statistics and studies are telling you. The benefit in understanding is worth the modest effort required.
Thank you for the kind words.

 

But, it will seem much longer, so it all works out in the end!