Medical Diagnosis: How doctors analyze symptoms to make diagnosis

Video transcript:
Normally people think making diagnosis from symptoms is like a matching game. Let me explain what I mean by that. When someone famous gets diagnosed with a disease the media talks about that disease a lot. But what exactly do they say? They repeat the same pattern. They invite doctors and experts to TV and ask, "what are the symptoms of this disease?" For example, let's call it disease A. All they talk about is how disease A have these 4 symptoms. Let's call them symptom 1, symptom 2, symptom 3 and symptom 4. What do people learn from that news? People learn that if you have the combination of these 4 symptoms, you have disease A. They also learned that if someone has being diagnosed with disease A, that person is likely to have these 4 symptoms. But, is that true? What if you have 2 out of the 4 symptoms? Do you then have a fifty percent chance of having that disease A?
Now let's look at the bigger picture now we have three diseases to compare. Each disease shares some common symptoms with the other but has a unique set of symptoms. Now if someone has symptom 1 and symptom 4, does that person have disease A or disease B? If someone has symptom 2 and symptom 3, does that person have disease A or disease C? The more important question is: if someone has an exact match, is that person more likely to have that disease than the disease with incomplete match? For example, if someone has the combination of symptoms 1, 2, 3 and 4 can that person still have disease B or disease C? So how do we decide? Where is the missing factor?
The most important factor, the one that you should look at first, and the one that is almost entirely absent from these discussion and completely ignored by talking heads on TV is the patient. Analysis of any symptom must start from the patient. All these factors associated with the patient matter.You need to know that person very well before you try to make any sense of symptoms in that person. So, what are a few things about the patient that influences how symptoms appear in that patient? The age of the patient, the gender, the body mass index, occupation, level of physical activity, life experiences, smoking habits, alcohol use, history of any prior medical problems and even the personality of that patient matter. After you know your patient very well you move on and analyze the particular symptom in detail, not just take that symptom on it's face value to make the diagnosis. So, you ask where exactly it started, what kind of pain was it, what made it worse,what made it better, how long did it last and whether it was a constant or intermittent. All these details and the patient factors give us a picture and help us decide what could be going on inside the patient's body and this is how we make the diagnosis.

[yolianderson]

You have a gift for explaining things. I learned more in this four minute video than reading my book.

[jaydeepyadav]

for a moment I thought my beats just stopped working😂

[shadyengineer]

This is totally true. I am a mechanical engineer and I have to say that diagnosis (or troubleshooting) should take in consideration the context.

[Rachie-njoi]

I'm lucky if I see my gp for 5 minutes and everytime it's a different one. First they said costochondritis then possible chronic pain possible atypical fibromyalgia now might be nerve pain. All they ever want to give me is amitriptyline. There are days I get upset being in pain 3 years and not knowing why is scary.

[ZeePark]

Basically, a good and thorough history taking will most likely give you a good and accurate diagnosis.

[DeltaAirlines]

Thnks for making this easy to understand for me, a high school kid who wants to know more about how the diagnosos process goes .

[sandilobianco]

Thanks for being an excellent doctor. Today it’s very hard to find good doctors..

[gregoryhouse]

doctor Nepali 🇳🇵 ho ? you made us proud

[kundangautam]

Sir I am from Nepal too, ,, aspiring to be a Internal medicine physician, , and have you done USMLE ?

[hanaineu]

I really enjoy his explanation! Please make more videos 😊

[atomicatdog]

People should watch this video in 2020

[resipsaloquitur]

BMI, you're done. Unless your diagnosis is disproportionality. There it some truth here, but on the matter of diagnosis of disease, I find this wanting. The human body is a system of systems which is unique to the individual. The dynamics of such a system requires much more than a statistic with a very broad range of probability. It's in the medicine and understanding of where one can successfully intervene in that system without risking the vitality of it. Heads up doc: the elements of a system are not the sum-total of that system. It's the parts that fight to remain homeostatic.

[saulcharapaqui]

I am not a doctor and I understand It. Thank you :)

[tamaragenar]

Can you help me find a diagnoses..its getting worse ..docter ..

[antdx]

One day a computer is going to do all this stuff like a super chess grand master computer.

[wildchild]

the patient! thats a joke havent found a dr who actually listens to their pts they just assume they know better. every dr needs to watch this video as a reminder.

[edwardnashton]

I wish therapists followed this rule. "Oh your child is crying? Since they saw thier mom died? Oh its clinical depression. Take some happy pill". Like Gee thanks doctor

[matthewmann]

Psychosis, Psychopathy, Sociopathy Narcissus. Machavellian, Schizophrenia, Amnesia, Amnemia, and other forms of diagnosis have little to no ways to be fixed permanently.

[deemo]

Thank god u don’t teach, me that was boring asf ... :)