Of course you *should* google your symptoms, duh!

[Treehugger]

Does anyone else here get annoyed when they hear the patronizing "Don't consult Dr. google!" We are incredibly lucky to have a vast amount of medical information at our finger tips. But, oh no, we shouldn't use it!

Discuss ...

[ciao_yall]

Does anyone else here get annoyed when they hear the patronizing "Don't consult Dr. google!" We are incredibly lucky to have a vast amount of medical information at our finger tips. But, oh no, we shouldn't use it!

Discuss ...

My husband was able to diagnose a skin rash from Dr. Google. My real doctor was quite impressed with his ability to match rash patterns. There might be a new career in it for him.

[Parasaurolophus]

We tell students not to rely on Wikipedia for their summaries/arguments/counterarguments/analyses/etc. all the time. I imagine it's not all that different with medical issues (i.e. it's more about how you're using Dr. G than the mere fact that you are), except that you're more likely to work yourself into thinking it's cancer.

[spork]

Google search results now include links directly to journal articles housed in NIH's PubMed, so of course I'm going to search, if only to ask physicians if their clinical experience differs from what's reported in the literature. If I don't do it, I get physicians who don't look at test results that were ordered by other physicians and who tell me, for example, that I have a liver disease that is fatal without a transplant, when I actually don't.

[aside]

I discovered I had hantavirus by Googling symptoms.  Only I didn't.

[pigou]

I doubt there are any advantages to googling vs. just getting a second opinion.

The problem with "Dr. Google" is that every cough could be a sign of lung cancer and then you have people who demand every test to rule out that they have lung cancer.

[Treehugger]

I doubt there are any advantages to googling vs. just getting a second opinion.

The problem with "Dr. Google" is that every cough could be a sign of lung cancer and then you have people who demand every test to rule out that they have lung cancer.

Well, there are some people who don't know how to reason about their symptoms. They haven't been taught to ask themselves pertinent questions like, is there some much more common and innocuous condition that might explain my symptoms? What could that be? Hmmm, post-viral cough? Maybe I have that? Since I have no other symptoms besides this cough (I am not tired, I am not losing weight, etc. etc,) I could probably wait a little while and see if my symptoms clear up on their own without too much risk.

Or is this something I can diagnose myself? (There really are conditions, some even serious that are self-diagnosable). Or do I really need to get a blood test/imaging/whatever done to really know what's up? Until then, I'll just choose to think good thoughts. And, who knows, maybe this will all go away on its own?


So, instead of teaching the lay person to be a good consumer of medical information, it's like "Oh no! Information! Flee!"

[mahagonny]

For some reason I often have better conversations with a pharmacist than with a doctor. A told a doctor that I thought 200 mg of zantac before bed every night was giving me abdominal pain right after he gave me a GI exam or some such. Having to rule out diverticulitis, which it wasn't. the doctor just said 'hmm....well, you can stop the medication if you want to.' Of course I did and immediately recuperated. Whereas when I said the same thing to a pharmacist he said 'oh yeah. that can happen. Big dose, bad reaction.'

Those inserts than come with my prescription medicine, wow. The print is tiny and it's thousands and thousands of words, diagrams of a molecule, graphs. Why would you distribute something like that to a layperson.

[AmLitHist]

This thread caught my eye, as ALHS and I have been hitting Dr. Google hard the past couple of days.  (After symptoms that didn't match a torn rotator cuff, but months of severe pain, his shoulder surgeon ordered a CT and arthrogram to confirm his idea that it really is a badly torn rotator cuff.)  After getting three options (PT and NSAIDs, which haven't worked so far; a patch; or shoulder replacement), we checked into all three, then could sensibly discuss the options with the surgeon yesterday.  ALHS is going for the latter--in his case, a reverse shoulder replacement*. 

Of course, Dr. Google also shows some Ooh! ICK! results, which fascinated ALHS and made me cringe.  I guess that's OK, since he's the one having it done.
----
*For those playing the home game, yes, this is ALHS's fifth major surgery in the past decade; he finally turns 60 next week.  Then again, it's been 5 1/2 years since his last--a full hip replacement--so we've been on borrowed time.  SIGH.