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Doctors Seeing a Rise In "Google-itis"
It's one of the fastest-growing health issues that doctors now face: "Google-itis." Everyone from concerned mothers to businessmen on their lunch break are typing in symptoms and coming up with rare diseases or just plain wrong information. Many doctors are bringing computers into examination rooms now so they can search along with patients to alleviate their fears. "I'm not looking for a relationship where the patient accepts my word as the gospel truth," says Dr. James Valek. "I just feel the Internet brings so much misinformation to the (exam) room that we have to fight through all that before we can get to the problem at hand."
There's an app for that!
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
I think every website that lists all these varied diseases should put a rarity score next to each illness. That way when you think you've got Wilson's disease, you can look and see with a simple number how unlikely it is.
As made up words go, google-itis is particularly stupid, since it literally means "inflammation or irritation of the google."
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
...which disease you have.
You mean I don't have Ebala?
No, sir, you googled a typo.
I'm sure I have it! Typos are one of the symptoms!
for those scientifically oriented, and aware of our natural cognitive bias, it is a fantastic tool to pin down the real problem, bringing relevant information to discuss with a doctor.
`echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
Google obviously isn't the best place to get medical information, these people are twits. If you watch all the past seasons of House you'll figure out what's wrong with you. (hint: it's not lupus.)
I think House has inspired a bit of this as well.
I'll start. My wife had intense abdominal pains which her GP diagnosed as an intestinal blockage, and prescribed liquids, laxatives, and rest.
When she didn't get better, she "Googled" her symptoms, and found that the birth control Yaz had been linked to gallbladder issues, which fit the symptoms. She told her GP -- who had never heard of these side effects -- and had her liver enzymes checked. Sure enough, they were below average. My wife was scheduled for a ($20k) liver function test, and simultaneously taken off Yaz. The symptoms subsequently disappeared, enzyme levels returned to normal, and she opted not to get the test.
Now this may well be a coincidence, as I myself have pointed out, but if it wasn't, it's a clear case where Google-itis saved us 20 grand, since she never would have had the idea to stop taking Yaz if she hadn't found similar cases online.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
A stinging sensation in the lower spine. It's Terellian Death Syndrome, isn't it?
We agreed you'd come to me before checking the medical database.
Well, this time I'm glad I did. Maybe we can stop the cellular decay before it's too late.
Reg, you don't have Terellian Death Syndrome.
- You're sure?
- I'm sure.
Then maybe it is Symbalene Blood Burn.
No. I don't see anything wrong at all. Wait a minute. There is a slight imbalance in your K-3 cell count.
My K-3s? No!
Barclay, I'm sure it's nothing.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
That is has been a problem of sorts since the bombardment of TV and print ads for Rx drugs. Why do they feel they need to advertise them? You can't just go and buy them OTC.
"There might be intelligent beings created by God in outer space even if there are none here on Earth." -Anonymous
True story - I woke up one morning and my eyes were both full of floating debris and this circular ring. Also there were lots of flashes in my eye. None of this is a good sign so I googled the symptoms and it said I likely had a detached retina and I should go to hospital immediately. I did, and yes, both retinas had significant rips and needed multiple laser treatments, a couple of vitrectomies and a membranectomy before I was given the all clear. The morning I presented the doctor told me that it was very good that I had come in so quickly because it could quickly have deteriorated to a stage where it wouldn't have been repairable.
Of course, my symptoms were pretty obvious and I had an idea what it was before I even started looking but the first hit said 'go to hospital. Now'. Very good advice. I wonder how often the opposite is true and people use Google and find that it suggests it is nothing to worry about and they don't go to the doctor? My guess is that is rather rare compared with the hypochondriacs who have nothing wrong with them.
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
It's a contagious form of medical student disease.
Even though they have textbooks, apparently they do the same thing. (...or at least it's been shown on a whole bunch of medical shows.)
A buddy of mine had severe sinus congestion. His doctor told him to take Afrin. Over the course of several years, his sinus congestion became worse. His doctor performed all sorts of exotic therapies, and continued to recommend Afrin. Thanks to Google, and Wikipedia, he discovered that long term use of Afrin can cause a dependency, and actually make the symptoms worse. A second opinion by another doctor confirmed his internet diagnosis, and he is doing much better.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
..one person actually cares about the patients health. Is it the one who made an appointment to go through an uncomfortable examination because they felt like something was wrong, or the one trying to squeeze as many credit ca... people through his business in an hour as possible?
Do your own research people. Go to your doctor armed with information, and don't let them brush off your concerns. Will your doctor like it? No, he went to medical school, and who are you to think you'd know something about your body that he didn't see in the 1.3 minutes he spent in the room with you so far?
To be fair, TFS seems to promote the idea of the doctor actually spending a few minutes with the patient doing the same types of searches they were doing at home, and when my daughters pediatrician did this for me and my wife around the H1N1 scare, we left feeling much better, so, I don't know.. am I building a strawman? I've heard it both ways.
Actually, a whole bunch -- http://blog.openmedicine.ca/node/223 . Given the rising cost of health care, this will certainly be a growth industry.
Family doctors are pretty much useless. Why do I need to book for an appointment, wait like 30-40mins at the clinic even though I have an appointment, and only able to talk to the doctor for 5mins?
I went to do my annual check-up with the family doctor a year ago, and I complained to him about my day-time sleepiness. The doctor simply dismissed it as "bored at work". I basically had to google the symptom myself afterward to discover that I might have sleep-apnea, and then book another appointment to tell the family doctor to just give me a referral to see a sleep specialist to do more comprehensive test. Lord and behold, my self-diagnose was confirmed by the sleep lab, and I even knew that the treatment would be CPAP before the sleep doctor suggested it.
The point of the story is, yes, there will be paranoid people who suspect they are dying of rare diseases because of their headache and whine to their doctor all day. For most people, they are better off googling their own symptom first, get a general understanding of what could be the cause of it, so that you can better talk to your family doctor on what test to do and which specialist to see.
Hey, you don't go to see a car salesman before doing your homework, why go see your doctor without getting a better idea of your own health?
Turned out to be bursitis. To be fair, I didn't really google it but went to webmd so I didn't end up in hypochondriac hell. It was very specific about every symptom I had (swollen elbow, the sort of pain, the warmness), and it gave me a reasonable diagnosis (don't mess with it, use the body part as little as possible, see a doctor if it doesn't stop being swollen in about two weeks). It saved me a doctor's visit, but more importantly, it gave me peace of mind.
I'm very well aware that sites like those, particularly online versions of the DSM IV, are hellholes for developing hypochondriacs, but when used responsibly with reasonable expectations, sites that are more professional in tone can be very useful. And if you don't like what you read, or it gets worse, well, you get to make the call about going to the doctor instead.
Wikipedia lists sources that have referred to it as cyberchondria.
So here's one for you: Why can't you fight that misinformation before the patient even steps foot in the exam room? Why don't doctors create peer-reviewed, well-written websites to counter all of the confusion and pseudo-science currently available online?
Because then the Dr. is liable for any information that he may have "pointed" you towards. Even peer-reviewed information, while it may cover the majority of the seekers' symptoms more accurately than the pseudo-science, there's that small percentage that would wind up taking the advice and be wrong...then there's a lawsuit.
More importantly, patients might be less likely to come in for an exam based on the information at-hand, thus the Dr. could not bill the standard 992XX code for their $85 office visit reimbursement from the insurance company. Hey, a guy's gotta eat.
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you can.
you can easily learn medicine, you just cant practice legally.
I personally am interested in pharmaceuticals and discovered that contrary to the line of bull big pharma gives us, hard powder pills do NOT drop in potency even 10 years later when stored properly. your old perkadan and Darvoset pills from 10 years ago are still highly potent. and generic low strength Anti-biotics are just as effective years later.
How did I test? the same way they do. Pitri dishes with a growth medium and a incubator. I innoculate the dishes and grow colonies, then innoculate the dishes with a measured dose of fresh and over 10 year old of the exact same antibiotic.... Penicillin. then count the colonies left after 48 hours of incubation.
I saw the same level of kill off. It got me a big A in college for my microbiology project. I can see liquid medicine and liqui-gel pills degrading. but I cant see a hard powder pill degrading when stored right. I'm betting they can go a half century.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
...if Medicine wasn't such a members-only club. There's the "In" crowd and then there's the "Rest" of us.
Take other fields.... writing, education, programming, painting, online stock trading -- anyone can hop online or go down to their local bookstore,
I'm a doctor.
You mean a multi-billion investment fund will take my advice where to invest their clients' money? I should just email them after having read some books?
Or perhaps the city will let me design a bridge? Or maybe I could learn to fly on Microsoft Flight Simulator and give my airline pilot advice during the next turbulent flight I encounter?
Maybe I should barge in and tell the magistrate in court what they should do - I've seen Perry Mason do it and read some books.
"I just feel the Internet brings so much misinformation to the (exam) room that we have to fight through all that before we can get to the problem at hand."
It's very good advice. People are not specialists. You can't be a stock broker or a computer programmer and expect to be a doctor too. It's nice to be able to read up information but don't presume you will understand it, let alone be able apply it.
So here's one for you: Why can't you fight that misinformation before the patient even steps foot in the exam room? Why don't doctors create peer-reviewed, well-written websites to counter all of the confusion and pseudo-science currently available online?
There are many such sites. In the UK the NHS has sites with information for patients. In the US the CDC (among other agencies) has similar sites. There is also WebMD. http://www.webmd.com/
It's usually helpful to start with your local Health Ministry websites and work from there. As said in the UK, this would be NHS.
There's also the Health on the Net Foundation which 'certifies' sites which contain credible medical information. http://www.hon.ch/
The knowledge is there already or do you want you doctor to spell it all out for you. Should he also take you down to your local library to point out the right section for you?
This happened Feb, 2004.
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.
I'd had an operation in my neck which was pretty deep in for a nerve tumor.
After it, I noted intense pains when I was hungry and then after a few months super sensitive skin on my cheek and face on that side. After trial and error, I figured out that the pains came from my salivary glands, so eating hurt, some foods were worse than others. I went to the doctors and they couldn't figure it out, some though it was my jaw, they looked at ear and were talking about breaking my jaw and reseting it.
I was watching Downfall and reading about the various Nazis on Wikipedia as I watched it, along comes Magda Goebbels and I read about Trigeminal neuralgia. I paused the show and asked my girlfriend to listen to a list of symptoms and tell me if it applies to my condition.
"The disorder is characterised by episodes of intense facial pain that usually last from a few seconds to several minutes or hours. The episodes of intense pain may occur paroxysmally. To describe the pain sensation, patients may describe a trigger area on the face, so sensitive that touching or even air currents can trigger an episode. It affects lifestyle as it can be triggered by common activities such as eating, talking, shaving and toothbrushing. The attacks are said by those affected to feel like stabbing electric shocks, burning, pressing, crushing, exploding or shooting pain that becomes intractable."
We emailed my doctor and she had me come in for a face to face, then referred me to someone else and he diagnosed it. Later that year I was accepted for a Medtronics nerve stim which had reduced the pain by 80-90%.
Without my case of Google and Wiki-itis, I may not have ever been diagnosed.
When I can get a free estimate from an auto mechanic, but have to pay a specialist just to ask me 10 questions and take my pulse & blood pressure (which I can do for free at most super markets) ... I'm going to Google my symptoms first so see if I can save $100+ from a doctor just telling me "take some aspirin and drink plenty of water."
If doctors are so concerned, maybe they should offer preliminary screening services at a competitive price as Google ... free.
..three times. I have gone to doctors over a span of years who have never correctly diagnosed a few issues I have. Always saying it's one thing or another. Well, over the last five years I've diagnosed, presented and suggested treatments for each issue to my present doctor. I have hyperhydrosis of the palms. It's not severe, but it definitely makes shaking hands or trying to open a pickle jar problematic. I had a GP who had never seen this type of issue before, and wanted to schedule me for specialist sessions with both a neurologist and a dermatologist. I told him to let me think about it as I was living paycheck to paycheck at the time, and had cobra health care that wouldn't cover it. Fifteen minutes of searching online gave me an answer to what the issue was. To which I presented to the GP, he looked up, and verified. Which subsequently answered my next problem, dyshidrotic eczema; which randomly affects my hands. Again, not in a severe manner, and isn't noticable unless I were to point it out, but something my GP couldn't identify himself. In the end, both of these were caused by a third issue, an allergic reaction to certain metals in my diet. For each of the issues Google was able to identify, diagnose, and offer treatment plans for. All of which my GP researched after being presented with and acknowledged. If I had gone to the specialists would I have been diagnosed correctly? I'm sure I would have. So does this mean I am as well versed as a specialist over a standard GP? No. But it certainly has saved me cash along the way.
As much as I tend to encourage people to do a bit of science on the side, I have to make a couple of remarks on this, being a biochemist myself. First - your conclusion is wrong. You at best showed that penicillin stays active when stored in dry powdered form. Drawing conclusions to any arbitrary substance is a bit far-fetched. That is a very important thing that you have to learn when doing science properly - how to assess what conclusions you can actually draw from your data.
Second - what where the concentrations you used? If you applied the penicillin at significant "overkill" concentration, you would basically see the statistical average amount of resistant cultures left in both cases. To be sure, you gotta do the experiment at different concentrations, and you gotta duplicate the plates for the experiment and the control, so you can compare the patterns of kill-off.
Third, even if you showed that the potency stays roughly the same, you did not show if there are degradation products which could possibly be harmful for a patient - you would need to do a toxicity assay to be sure that it stays harmless for the patient.
Forth, regarding the remaining colonies - did they survive because of innate resistance or because the antibiotic concentration was too low?
Generally I think your conclusion is probably right, but the data you showed are not sufficient to make that conclusion. What you did is great for a college-level experiment, but in reality, there are more factors that you have to check for. That's why I sunk a couple of years of my life into studying that stuff. As I said, this is not to discourage you - doing science at home is great fun and you can learn a lot, but you gotta be careful evaluating your data. The most important part about science is, at least to me, that you gotta be aware that a single experiment might answer one question, but raises 10 others, on which you gotta follow up.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
I went to bed and heard her moaning and groaning in the next room, and figured that she was just having some fun with her BF. When I got up in the morning, I found her in the living room, doubled over in pain, and still moaning (with the useless BF just watching). I called in that I would be late to work, and took her to the hospital/emergency. We waited for a long time in the (empty) waiting room, to see some nurses (and one person who may or may not have been a doctor) who took a quick look at her and came up with the conclusion that as she'd recently had a period they were just menstrual cramps, that she was being overly complaintive, and told me to take her home.
Luckily we ignored that advice, waited around a bit longer and a doctor who knew what he was doing. After a quick X-ray, it turned out she had an ectopic (sp?) pregnancy. Essentially sperm and egg had met in-tube during her period, and it was then developing in her tubes rather than the uterus. It's a dangerous, and potentially fatal, condition. She was rushed to a bigger hospital, and they were able to take care of things.
If we had gone home straight off as told, she might have ended up dead or at least severely damaged and/or unable to have children in the future.
Ok, I don't have any hard data, but it seems to me that in reality today for every patient with mis-informed "Googleitis" there are ten or more people who are getting better medical care because they are informed about their condition or even have already correctly self-diagnosed. Some of the comments right here to point.
But doctors are upset because they are not used to having informed patients. They are used being the godlike arbitors of secret knowledge whose judgement will be trusted 100% because of their degree. But in reality of course they are human and all too fallible, and even more so nowadays that they are increasingly simply pharmaceutical salesmen rather than healers and don't really have or take the time to actually know their patients.
Before doctors found it easy to be confident... because hardly anyone ever questioned them. Now things are getting a bit more difficult. Poor doctors? I'm finding it difficult to be sympathetic.
There may be a lot of information of questionable quality on the Net, but overall I have not a shred of doubt that the empowerment the Net has brought to the individual in this regard has been a boon to public health.
Your health, your responsibility. Period. Many doctors can be dismissive, usually with good cause, that is their experience. However even good doctors can be surprised. None are suspecting that rare condition. The only way they will test for it is if you are insistent. Some not even then, in which case you shouldn't be afraid to see a new doctor. The internet is a powerful tool, and can be very useful for a savvy user. One just has to be aware that not all sites are reputable or of the same quality. Also there is a lot of things out there, and to not get worked up about what could be wrong with you and looking at worst case scenarios. Finally, your not a doctor, so using your own judgement and what you can glean from the internet, go see a doctor is you feel the need to. True story: I felt I was having trouble breathing and chest pain. This was dismissed as stress (I was young 30). However having read too much about worse case, quickly turned into panic attacks and anxiety making it worse in a sort of feedback loop. Anyway I figured it out, but it wasn't fun. During this time I remember talking to a friend of mine who gave me the speech about being your own health advocate, and being responsible for your health not a doctor. When she was younger (early 20's) she was dismissed by many doctors, but through persistence was diagnosed with cancer. Which she beat. However had she not been as persistant things might have been different. She was young, and healthy, and it was a rare diagnoses, but it happens.
So I guess what I am trying to say is that:
1) Ultimately your health is your own responsibility using the internet to help you is a good idea,
2) However temper your imagination, and try not to get worked up about possible outcomes.
Erm, what?
Medical knowledge is not locked up. Nobody is stopping you from buying the exact same textbooks as the doctors. Nobody is stopping you from knowing pretty much everything a doctor knows. Pretty much the only thing you can't learn on your own is whatever you learn by cutting up a cadaver.
If you're looking to dispense your own drugs, well, that's not going to happen, nor is it a case of "some good reasons, some of the time, to lock [it up]." It's a horrible idea in most cases, horrendously prone to abuse that people will literally die from. That is the same reason you don't get to practice because you passed the $70 Internet Doctor course. You're going to kill people. Lots of them. If you want to use your newfound knowledge, use it by talking to your doctor and having him run whatever test you want -- most doctors will capitulate even if they think it's stupid.
People are dumb. Sorry, but they are.
For starters, they believe things for stupid reasons including advertising, placebo effect, "my best friend told me so and he's smart," etc. Do you have any idea how many millions of dollars were made by "HEAD ON! APPLY DIRECTLY TO FOREHEAD!?" It's a ball of freaking wax. Same with most herbal supplements. Some of them work to some degree; most do not. Then there's things like vaccines causing autism, that some people just believe no matter how many peer-reviewed studies on well-written websites tell them otherwise. There's a show on HGTV calling "Selling New York" about high-priced real estate, where one guy brings in "[his] energy guy" to cleanse the bad energies out of an apartment before selling it. What can anybody possibly say to people like this?
Second, I suspect he was trying to be nice. I think the problem is less the bad information as it is people making themselves paranoid. I have, as we speak, little rash spots on various parts of my body and a headache. It could be meningitis and I could be dying as I type. Or more likely, it could be allergies and dyshydrotic eczema since I know I have both. Many highly fatal diseases present as a cold. If people are Googling about it, it means they're already bothered by it enough that they don't think "get some rest and drink lots of fluids" is getting the job done. That's going to instantly tilt their perceptions toward something more serious than the most likely culprits, even with no particular evidence.
Medicine is difficult, especially diagnosing a problem. Lots of things present as other things, and many of those "other things" are "wuh oh, you're dead." They're also uncommon. You have to use a blend of symptoms, tests (if available), previous history and just plain odds to make a diagnosis. Testing for every possible thing not only would be a collossal waste of the doctor's time and the lab's time, but also money on the part of patients and insurance companies (circling back around to patients). It's good that people are becoming involved in their own healthcare, but it doesn't mean it isn't ultimately a waste of time in the vast majority of circumstances.
All that said: WebMD. Peer-reviewed, excellent source of information, excellent and easy way of getting a huge list of what you might have based on your symptoms.