[Fat Bear Science] Doctors’ words: Many people see doctors this way, forcing themselves to be “terminally ill”

Fat Bear, I've been having blood in my sputum lately. I checked online and found out I have lung cancer. I'm so scared.

Sister Xiong, this is a typical case of searching for medical advice. The correct approach is to go to a regular hospital for a check-up.

The greatest convenience of the information age is that if you don’t understand something, you can easily look it up online.

"Searching" has become a habit for many people. In life, there are always colds, fevers, headaches, etc., and when you feel unwell, it is too troublesome to go to the hospital, so you search the symptoms first to see what the disease may be and whether you can buy some medicine to cure it.

But it doesn’t matter if you don’t check, but it’s fatal if you do: black hands may be blood clots, itchy eyes may be glaucoma or cataracts, trembling hands may be Parkinson’s, blood in sputum may be lung cancer... After this diagnosis, I’m afraid I should make a will for myself. So netizens have come up with a jingle: "Searching for medical treatment, cancer starts; cancer patients, no one survives." So why is "searching for medical treatment" so scary? If you are sick, can you search for medical treatment on it?

Expert Profile

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Zhang Xi

Doctor of Medicine.

He is good at the diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer, esophageal cancer, mediastinal tumors and other tumors, and is proficient in minimally invasive thoracic surgery.

The so-called "searching for medical treatment" means searching for your own symptoms online to see which diseases match your symptoms and then make a diagnosis. This is because ordinary people's understanding of diseases often only stays at the level of "symptoms". However, the element of "symptoms" is the least representative in the diagnosis of diseases.

For example, the same "stomach pain" (medically known as abdominal pain), the diseases involved in upper abdominal pain alone include "acute and chronic gastritis, gastric ulcer, gastric spasm, gastric cancer, duodenal ulcer, cholecystitis, cholangitis, biliary ascariasis, acute and chronic pancreatitis, aortic dissection, myocardial infarction..." and hundreds of other diseases.

For example, "blood in sputum" is indeed one of the symptoms of lung cancer, but most of the time, blood in sputum is caused by other diseases, such as bronchiectasis, tuberculosis, or a small amount of bleeding in the nasal cavity and pharyngeal mucosa caused by dry weather.

As for symptoms such as "fatigue" and "muscle aches", they are even less characteristic and can occur in almost any disease. Therefore, it is very unreliable to diagnose a disease based solely on symptoms.

So why do symptoms that appear online often indicate serious illnesses? There may be several reasons:

There are several reasons why the symptoms of diseases are described as very serious on the Internet.

Attract attention

Articles that exaggerate symptoms are more eye-catching. The more impressive the article is, the more miraculous it is, and the more exaggerated the title, the more people will read it. For example, between the two articles, "A 90s guy ate instant noodles for years, and after a stomachache, he was diagnosed with stomach cancer" and "How to screen and diagnose stomach cancer", which one will be more likely to spread?

Truly valuable articles are easily overlooked

Truly valuable articles are not easy to understand. There are often dozens of common diseases that match one symptom. If we really list them all, no one would like to read them, nor would they understand them, so such search results are easily ignored.

Attract patients' attention

The same symptom of blood in the stool may be hemorrhoids or rectal cancer. If a patient with rectal cancer is ignored as having hemorrhoids, the consequences will undoubtedly be serious, and may even cost his life; if hemorrhoids are treated as rectal cancer, it is nothing more than spending some registration fees and time to go to the hospital for treatment. As a doctor, you tell the patient the most serious possible consequences so that the patient will pay enough attention and receive the necessary diagnosis and treatment in time.

Profit-driven

The first few results of online search are often advertisements. Since someone has spent money to place the advertisements, they naturally hope that someone will go to their hospital and pay for treatment after seeing them. The "Putian" hospitals that made a lot of noise before were some unscrupulous hospitals that posted false information online to deceive patients into seeking medical treatment. So how credible are such search results?

This is how doctors treat patients in real life.

"Seeing a doctor" - observing the patient's physical signs

Gender, age, mental condition, height, weight, skin, eyes, breathing, walking posture... and so on.

“Diagnosis” – asking about medical history and symptoms

The onset time of the symptoms, the triggering causes, the severity, the urgency, the mitigating factors, whether there are other symptoms, what illnesses the patient had in the past, what occupation he is engaged in...etc.

"Physical examination"

Includes "inspection, palpation, percussion, and auscultation."

Auxiliary tests and inspections

Verify the initial diagnosis, or rule out some diseases, or discover some hidden problems,

When doctors see patients, they need to make a diagnosis based on a comprehensive analysis of factors such as "medical history, symptoms, physical signs, and auxiliary examinations." In the outpatient clinic, when doctors see patients, they will have a preliminary impression of the patient's gender, age, mental state, height, weight, skin, eyes, breathing, walking posture, etc. For example, if the skin is dark and dull and the body is thin, chronic liver disease may be considered; if the body is fat and the breathing is short and labored, cardiopulmonary disease may be considered. And this information can only be obtained by seeing the patient in person, which is the origin of the term "seeing a doctor."

Doctors need to make a comprehensive analysis based on medical history, symptoms, signs, auxiliary examinations and other factors when making a diagnosis.

After the doctor takes a look at the patient, it is time to ask about the condition. The onset time of the symptoms, the triggering cause, the severity, the urgency, the mitigating factors, whether there are other symptoms, what diseases the patient has had before, what occupation he is in, etc., are all important information that needs to be understood. This is called "interview", which is a job that requires a solid knowledge base, clinical experience and communication skills. From the patient's point of view, it may be just a few dozen short questions, but these questions contain all the experience and judgment of a doctor. It is precisely because of the interview that the doctor can sort out the many possible diseases and make the most likely diagnosis.

The next step is the physical examination, which includes inspection, palpation, percussion, and auscultation. For example, an experienced doctor can get a rough idea of ​​whether a lump on the breast is benign or malignant by just touching it. A stethoscope can also provide a lot of information about lung and heart diseases.

Finally, doctors are not omnipotent and must rely on tests and examinations to verify initial judgments, rule out certain diseases, or discover some hidden problems, and ultimately make an accurate and comprehensive diagnosis.

I believe that everyone has understood, as I have, that wanting to use the "search" method to see a doctor is undoubtedly oversimplifying medical work.

In summary, seeing a doctor is a very complex and systematic process, which requires more than ten years of learning and training, and sufficient knowledge accumulation and clinical experience to be competent. Such a complex mental work cannot be replaced even by today's advanced artificial intelligence. Ordinary people want to see a doctor by "searching", which is undoubtedly too simple for medical work. Therefore, if you have any physical discomfort that you can't solve by yourself, you should go to the hospital as soon as possible to make an appointment.

Text/Fat Bear Photos/Internet (Please contact us to delete) Review/Chest Tumor Center

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