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LONDON - It may prove to be a better diagnostic tool than the stethoscope or the thermometer.
Next time your doctor appears baffled over what is wrong with you, you could try suggesting he "google for a diagnosis." Researchers have found that a simple Google search can crack the toughest diagnostic problems which foil even the brightest medical specialists.
Modern medicine is so complex that the average doctor, estimated to carry around two million medical facts in his head, does not have a big enough brain to be capable of identifying every ailment presented to the surgery or clinic.
But Google gives access to more than three billion medical articles on the web and may be the most powerful diagnostic aid available to doctors.
To test the value of Google as a clinical tool, researchers from Brisbane University, Australia selected 26 of the hardest cases and found the search engine got the correct diagnosis in more than half of them (58 per cent) - with just a few strokes of the key board.
Google successfully diagnosed conditions ranging from Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) the degenerative brain disorder to Cat Scratch disease, an infection causing swelling of the lymph nodes after an animal scratch.
Writing in the online version of the British Medical Journal, they say: "The role of diagnostician remains one of the most challenging and fulfilling roles of a physician....Search engines allow quick access to an ever increasing knowledge base...Our study suggests that in difficult diagnostic cases, it is often useful to "google for a diagnosis"....Doctors in training need to become proficient in [its] use."
The cases were taken from the New England Journal of Medicine which tests the diagnostic skills of its readers each week by asking them to judge what is wrong with a patient whose brief medical history and symptoms are given.
The researchers, who were unaware of the correct diagnosis, entered between three and five search terms and selected the three most prominent results thrown up by Google that seemed to fit the signs and symptoms.
In some cases they rejected the Google diagnosis as not being accurate enough.
For example it correctly diagnosed extrinsic allergic alveolitis in a patient with breathing problems but did not specify it was "hot tub lung" caused by Mycobacterium Avium, a bug that thrives in hot tubs which are becoming increasingly popular.
The authors acknowledge that they are not the first to discover the power of Google as a diagnostic aid - patients have been using it for years.
They describe the case of a 16-year-old water polo player who came to hospital with a swollen and painful arm.
After evaluating him, they started to explain the source of the pain, caused by a thrombosis [blood clot], when the boy's father blurted out: "But of course he has Paget-von Schrotter syndrome" and proceeded to give the doctors a mini-tutorial on the features of the condition and how it should be treated.
He was correct on all fronts - and had found his information by googling it.
- INDEPENDENT
