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."

Comments

Hypochondria?

[idontgno]

There's an app for that!

Re:Hypochondria?

[RingDev]

In a world filled with perfect Doctors, I would agree with you. But in today's world of general practitioners who spend as little time with their patients as possible, individuals must take some amount of the research on to themselves.

My wife for example, is extremely flexible, to the point of being able to touch her fore-arm with her thumb on the same hand, dislocating joints, and other non-normal flexibility issues. She asked her doctor about it and got the basic "Is it causing you pain? No? Ignore it." But while researching another medical condition that she had been diagnosed with, she came across a reference to a genetic disease that causes this type of flexibility. She talked to her mother about it, 60 years old and still quite limber. She talked to her grandmother about it, 90 years old and she can still touch her toes with out bending her knees and join her hands behind her back (one over the shoulder, one under). It was pretty clear that the female side of her family was carrying this trait.

So next time she went to see her doctor, she mentioned the disease and the family history, the doc laughed and told her to leave the diagnosis to the "pros".

A month later when she was going to her new patient exam with her new general practitioner, she brought up the disease and family history. The doc listened, ordered some tests, and discovered that she did indeed have the disease. And it altered the treatment of her other condition.

So I'm just saying, even a good general practitioner won't be able to suss out all of your ailments if they are trying to diagnose you based on a 5 minute interview and what's in your chart. But if you point out some of the research you've done, even if they don't take you at your word, it can be enough to make them want to investigate that same avenue.

-Rick

Re:Hypochondria?

[Kell Bengal]

It's a good point. I've had a similar experience. I was told by my doctor that I had an incurable condition and would require expensive medication semi-regularly for the rest of my life. I immediately set out to learn more about the illness and upon doing further research I noted that some things didn't quite add up. I insisted on extra tests (just to be sure, doc) and sure enough they came back negative.

Now, a bit of internet reading won't make me an expert, but during my consultation it allowed me to be an active participant and not just a recipient of diagnosis from on high.

Re:Hypochondria?

[Pax681]

What kind of joke is that?

They omitted the sexual organs on a naked medical illustration?

Pitiful.

ah i think i might be able to assist you in understanding apples stance on that my friends

the only prick allowed on Apple.com is Steve Jobs :P

Rarity score

[UndyingShadow]

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.

Google-itis

[oldspewey]

As made up words go, google-itis is particularly stupid, since it literally means "inflammation or irritation of the google."

Let the anecdotal counterpoints begin.

[StikyPad]

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.

Re:Let the anecdotal counterpoints begin.

[BobMcD]

This.

The dirty truth that's seldom told is: Your doctor doesn't know any better than you do. He or she is making highly educated guesses, and that's about the end of it.

Your tribal witchdoctor of years past had less knowledge, but was doing the exact same thing. Science came along and made medicine less of a guessing game, but it can never remove it completely.

From TFA:

No longer is it between a doctor who knows all and a parent who knows nothing.

Show me the doctor who genuinely 'knows all' and I'll show you a miracle worker. It simply doesn't work that way, never has, and I'm sorry if it makes some practitioners sad that the patients have more tools.

As in the case above, however, this is genuinely a good thing for us all.

Re:It wouldn't be so much a big deal...

[Mindcontrolled]

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.