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Tuesday, July 19, 2005Another adult patient became anxious about the redness and discomfort in his eye. After reading about red eyes on the Internet, he was convinced that he had a herpes infection and worried that he could lose his vision. It took me about five minutes to rule out herpes or another serious problem and another 10-15 minutes to convince him that the redness was due to the start of a common cold. He brings up a good point. Too many people dismiss the art of diagnosis that is the benefit of going to medical school and assume that they've correctly diagnosed themselves based on their internet reading. It takes more than a little effort to convince them that their diagnosis is wrong. I had a patient recently who was convinced the lump on his neck was lymphoma. It was a sebaceous cyst. I don't think I ever did completely convince him it was a cyst. His internet search had convinced him it was lymphoma. And you can't really tell the difference in a photograph. But one of the advantages of medical school is that you get to touch and feel lots of cysts and lymph nodes and you learn to tell the difference. posted by Sydney on 7/19/2005 07:01:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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