Rate this book

Diagnosis: Dispatches From The Frontlines Of Medical Mysteries (2009)

by Lisa Sanders(Favorite Author)

3.9 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

1848311338 (ISBN13: 9781848311336)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Icon Books

review 1: This book is full of medical anecdotes and is a great one for aspiring doctors or diagnosticians as a "Sherlock Holmes" type read. Similar in concepts as "How Doctors Think" by Jererome Gropman, Sanders reveals even more anecdotes about how doctors make diagnosis and how they use inductive and deductive reasoning to arrive at answers. The only thing I'll have to be a little contentious about this book is how she's hypocritical in the type of thinking that she deems superior than another. Another disagreement is of the supreme advocacy of the physical exam based on her logical framework. I think the idea is good, but not for the same reasons. In the book, she describes one patient who complains of full body pains with a history of Lyme Disease. While she shuns one aspec... moret of thought "Chronic Lyme Disease" for a doctor who would deem as the last possibility of diagnosis based on her history, she seems to side with a doctor that deems polymyalgia rheumatica as the last possibility of diagnosis based on "it can't be anything else that I know of". With the structure of the book, while discussing the type of thinking structure of a doctor, this style of thinking is entirely identical. One simply can not make the argument that the approach is any different because both function under deductive reasoning of the physician base knowledge with a great degree of uncertainty. This is a retrospective analysis. If there were a case of Lyme Disease antibiotic resistance, an equally different solution may have occurred. It also doesn't account for uncertainty because we don't know if Lyme Disease is a held reservoir somewhere else from the body either. The list goes on and on. It's simply not a good example because the last treatment was broad steroidal intervention, which would have reduced inflammation in a lyme disease case as well. I'm all for trying something else when an intervention doesn't work, but to claim truth in diagnosis or the superiority in her diagnostic path is fallacious. The physical exam logical framework is based on historical relevance and the role of a physician. Let's face it. Technology can visualize and diagnose disease better than a physician can in a plain physical exam. Thus, I'm skeptical about the "cost" issue- is a life worth the 5% "miss chance" in a statistic? The strength of the physical exam lies in its ability to diagnose when not particularly looking for something. It reveals truth more broadly because it can reveal information when you're not always looking for it. Rather than tunnel-visioning symptoms, the physical exam elucidates information that could become critical clues in patient diagnosis. A routine physical exam of patients can help reduce biases that occur during diagnosis. The caveat is that this concept can extend to anything in medicine. We can always test more, give blood tests, MRI, CT, Xrays all day long and find the unknown, which would help in diagnosis. Thus, I believe the most salient argument for the physical exam is that it provides a form of testing that is inexpensive, time efficient method in checking cursory "broadly physical (without simply biochemical means)" or "less probable" causes of diseases that can drastically change the way a physician diagnosis's a disease. It can never supplant technology.Overall, other than the rare hypocritical pitfalls of the logical framework of some of the arguments, I really liked the anecdotes. I especially liked the chapter about internet diagnosis and its advancements. In this respect, I wish that the author would have delved into other types of new diagnostic techniques such as proteonomics and metabolomics which would eliminate many of the biases that would exist in practicing medicine today.
review 2: I tend to be fascinated by intriguing diagnoses or books that go through the ins-and-outs of the medical profession, and this book was no exception. It was very readable, despite the difficult subject matter, and it went into a lot of problems with the process of diagnosis today. I wish, however, that it had provided some solutions for readers (i.e., the patients)--ways to get the doctor they're seeing to not fall into the same trap. less

Download links for: Diagnosis: Dispatches From The Frontlines Of Medical Mysteries

Advertising