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Google Used To Diagnose Disease
dptalia writes "About 20% of all diseases are misdiagnosed, a percentage that has remained steady since the 1930s. However, scientists have discovered that by inputting the key symptoms into Google they can get the correct diagnosis about 58% of the time. For rare and unusual diseases, this provides doctors the information they need to get a correct cure. Of course, Google is only as good as its knowledge base, and its users, so this isn't a cure for everything."
I had a long term and quite painful medical problem to do with the eustation tube in my ear being blocked. The doctors, and even the ENT specialist didn't really have much of a clue. We tried steroids (that helped a little), pinching the nose and blowing, decongestants and all sorts.
What Google did for me was to keep going back to doctors with "would xxxx work?". It got me prompting them. Eventually, I tried out some massage, which someone had recommended on groups (that Google found) as a way to relieve the tension. And met a massage therapist who applied some Bowen Technique which solved the problem (the jaw alignment was out after dental work).
I wouldn't use Google alone, but sometimes, doctors don't think of everything. Some of their suggestions were little more than "switch it off and on again".
Specialist put her on a drug that caused her ever increasing grand mal seizures. He kept uping the dosage despite seizures being a contra-indication. She started with occassional seizures and progressed to a couple a day. She'd had previously had brain surgery to remove an araknoid cyst some time before and was experiencing petite mal (blank staring) seizures and narcolepsy. (I now suspect that carbonmonoxide poisoning due to a faulty car exhaust was partly to blame and not the brain injury, nor subsequent treatment but the truth is I won't know). Anyway the drug was also killing her personality and making her moody and erratic. Unfortunately coming off the drug immediately leaves patients prone to being suicidal so we had to bring her down over a period of weeks.
Did the doctor work out what was going on? No the arrogant son of a bitch didn't bother to give the fact that his patient had developed seizures a second thought. Fucker wanted her to stay on the medication. I had googled it, and after we pointed out to him that it was a contraindication and asked to have her come off it for a while, he said okay. Again I'm the one who looked up the fact that suddenly stopping would have made her suicidal.
Three things were re-enforced for me:
1) Yes Google is only as good as the researcher. Using Google to find a specialist site is probably one of the better ways to go. Thing is you have to learn some of the lingo and understand what you're seeing. Takes a bit of plugging away to do that.
2) The medical profession is full of arrogant tossers. The only less practical, more corrupt systems I know of are our legal and political systems. Some doctors are good despite the system. However the system encourages self serving educated idiots who take no interest in themselves (not to mention overworked perpetually tired doctors making life and death decisions). Most doctors don't take kindly to being second guessed, think they know best even when they haven't considered something properly, and think themselves above using technology to diagnose a patient. In the 21st Century the medical profession remains very 16th Century.
3) Get a good doctor and they make you better. Get a bad one and they'll take a minor problem you have and kill you with their incorrect treatment. It is entirely possible to know better than your doctor. In that case you still do need someone medically trained. Get a second or third opinion. Your life can depend on it.
She was deteriorating so quickly that I have no doubt whatsoever that had I not worked out what was wrong with my fiancee she'd have been dead within about 6 months from the time I did work it out (if not sooner). Having a search engine there to be able to research her condition was literally a life saver. Google happened to be king of the hill at the time.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
This happened Feb, 2003.
2 months after finishing college and starting a new job in a new area, I woke up one morning with an odd stomach pain. I didn't think anything of it, so I went to work. By lunch time, the pain did not relax at all. It didn't get worse... just a steady piercing pain. I told a co-worker I was taking a half day. By 5pm, I was starting to get really worried because this was not a normal feeling stomach pain, and it was still there.
I went to Google and typed in stomach pain, and that's when I was starting to really get worried. Several websites started directing me to Appendicitis. After reading more, I had all the Appendicitis symptoms except "nauseated". I called a friend, and he said, "Nah, man! It's probably just something you ate! You said you aren't feeling nauseated, right? I'd wait until you were nauseated."
I had crappy insurance. I didn't want to go to the hospital unless I needed to, but since everything I read online was pointing to Appendicitis, I eventually decided that peace of mind was worth an out-of-pocket exam, so I jumped in the car and drove myself to the ER.
I went to the front desk, and he asked, "What do you think is wrong?"
I said, "I think I have Appendicitis."
"All right, fill this out and sit over there."
When I got to finally see a nurse, I said, "I think I have Appendicitis."
"Does this hurt?" "Yes."
When I got to finally a doctor, I said, "I think I have Appendicitis."
"We'll run some tests."
They ran a blood test. Came back positive.
They ran some x-ray type test. Came back positive.
By 10pm, the doctor came and said, "You have Appendicitis." By 5am, they were operating on me.
After one flaming bag of pus removed, and ~$5,000 worth of medical debt, I spent the next week on disability leave playing Final Fantasy X in my apartment. Good game, btw.
A few of my friends and I (are we're all in the biology field in some degree, as researchers) refuse to use doctors who don't know what the internet is. I'm glad you do, but it is sad when you talk to a doctor about some large issue you have, and the doctor doesn't know about/use the internet to make sure they're aware of all the treatment issues.
One of the most interesting cases in our group was a friend who had osteonecrosis in one of his knees. Some of the doctors he went to weren't keeping up with modern practice, and they recommended full knee replacements. He finally found a younger doctor who was up to date, and the surgery he had involved boring small holes into his knee, so that blood would enter those areas and rebuild the bone there.
The surgery was a complete success, my friend didn't need an artificial knee (at age 30!), and now he's perfectly healthy. The recovery time for the new surgery was much lower, and it was an all around good solution.