Never Guess the Diagnosis

Posted by Anthony Lee Oct 11, 2008

There is a reason we have doctors. Many conditions can cause the same symptoms, so one cannot simply know the condition based on the symptom. The expertise of a physician can help sort out what conditions are likely or not likely, which enables him or her to make an accurate diagnosis. Guessing one's diagnosis without a formal evaluation has the great risk of being incorrect.

Consider this real-life example of a man who had frequent burning chest pain for about a year. This patient had assumed all along that it was gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). He was wrong. When he finally underwent a cardiac evaluation because of worsening shortness of breath, it was discovered that, on coronary angiography, one of the major blood vessels to his heart was completely blocked. The chest pain was a heart attack all along, and because the blocked vessel was never stented or bypassed, a large portion of his heart muscle had died. This greatly reduced his exercise capacity.

The flipside, of course, could be true with a patient who fears a heart attack but really has GERD. In either case, it's always best for a doctor to look at the possibilities and facilitate the necessary evaluations to make the diagnosis. Again, never guess the diagnosis. This is also true for individuals who look up medical information online. There's nothing wrong with that as long as the information is discussed with the doctor and not used in place of a clinical evaluation.