Procedure




General components which are present in a diagnostic procedure in most of the various available methods include:

  • Complementing the already given information with further data gathering, which may include questions of the medical history (potentially from other people close to the patient as well), physical examination and various diagnostic tests.
    A diagnostic test is any kind of medical test performed to aid in the diagnosis or detection of disease. Diagnostic tests can also be used to provide prognostic information on people with established disease.
  • Processing of the answers, findings or other results. Consultations with other providers and specialists in the field may be sought.

There are a number of methods or techniques that can be used in a diagnostic procedure, including performing a differential diagnosis or following medical algorithms.:198 In reality, a diagnostic procedure may involve components of multiple methods.:204

Differential diagnosisedit

The method of differential diagnosis is based on finding as many candidate diseases or conditions as possible that can possibly cause the signs or symptoms, followed by a process of elimination or at least of rendering the entries more or less probable by further medical tests and other processing, aiming to reach the point where only one candidate disease or condition remains as probable. The final result may also remain a list of possible conditions, ranked in order of probability or severity. Such a list is often generated by computer-aided diagnosis systems.

The resultant diagnostic opinion by this method can be regarded more or less as a diagnosis of exclusion. Even if it does not result in a single probable disease or condition, it can at least rule out any imminently life-threatening conditions.

Unless the provider is certain of the condition present, further medical tests, such as medical imaging, are performed or scheduled in part to confirm or disprove the diagnosis but also to document the patient's status and keep the patient's medical history up to date.

If unexpected findings are made during this process, the initial hypothesis may be ruled out and the provider must then consider other hypotheses.

Pattern recognitionedit

In a pattern recognition method the provider uses experience to recognize a pattern of clinical characteristics.:198 It is mainly based on certain symptoms or signs being associated with certain diseases or conditions, not necessarily involving the more cognitive processing involved in a differential diagnosis.

This may be the primary method used in cases where diseases are "obvious", or the provider's experience may enable him or her to recognize the condition quickly. Theoretically, a certain pattern of signs or symptoms can be directly associated with a certain therapy, even without a definite decision regarding what is the actual disease, but such a compromise carries a substantial risk of missing a diagnosis which actually has a different therapy so it may be limited to cases where no diagnosis can be made.

Diagnostic criteriaedit

The term diagnostic criteria designates the specific combination of signs, symptoms, and test results that the clinician uses to attempt to determine the correct diagnosis.

Some examples of diagnostic criteria, also known as clinical case definitions, are:

  • Amsterdam criteria for hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer
  • McDonald criteria for multiple sclerosis
  • ACR criteria for systemic lupus erythematosus
  • Centor criteria for strep throat

Clinical decision support systemedit

Clinical decision support systems are interactive computer programs designed to assist health professionals with decision-making tasks. The clinician interacts with the software utilizing both the clinician's knowledge and the software to make a better analysis of the patients data than either human or software could make on their own. Typically the system makes suggestions for the clinician to look through and the clinician picks useful information and removes erroneous suggestions.

Other diagnostic procedure methodsedit

Other methods that can be used in performing a diagnostic procedure include:

  • Usage of medical algorithms
  • An "exhaustive method", in which every possible question is asked and all possible data is collected.:198 This is often referred to as a diagnostic workup.
  • Use of a sensory pill that collects and transmits physiological information after being swallowed.
  • Using optical coherence tomography to produce detailed images of the brain or other soft tissue, through a "window" made of zirconia that has been modified to be transparent and implanted in the skull.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Medical diagnosis

Image
Medical diagnosis (abbreviated Dx or D S ) is the process of determining which disease or condition explains a person's symptoms and signs. It is most often referred to as diagnosis with the medical context being implicit. The information required for diagnosis is typically collected from a history and physical examination of the person seeking medical care. Often, one or more diagnostic procedures , such as medical tests, are also done during the process. Sometimes posthumous diagnosis is considered a kind of medical diagnosis. Diagnosis is often challenging, because many signs and symptoms are nonspecific. For example, redness of the skin (erythema), by itself, is a sign of many disorders and thus does not tell the healthcare professional what is wrong. Thus differential diagnosis, in which several possible explanations are compared and contrasted, must be performed. This involves the correlation of various pieces of information followed by the recognition and differentiation
Read more

History

The first recorded examples of medical diagnosis are found in the writings of Imhotep (2630–2611 BC) in ancient Egypt (the Edwin Smith Papyrus). A Babylonian medical textbook, the Diagnostic Handbook written by Esagil-kin-apli (fl.1069–1046 BC), introduced the use of empiricism, logic and rationality in the diagnosis of an illness or disease. Traditional Chinese Medicine, as described in the Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon or Huangdi Neijing, specified four diagnostic methods: inspection, auscultation-olfaction, interrogation, and palpation. Hippocrates was known to make diagnoses by tasting his patients' urine and smelling their sweat.
Read more

Medical uses

Image
A diagnosis, in the sense of diagnostic procedure, can be regarded as an attempt at classification of an individual's condition into separate and distinct categories that allow medical decisions about treatment and prognosis to be made. Subsequently, a diagnostic opinion is often described in terms of a disease or other condition. (In the case of a wrong diagnosis, however, the individual's actual disease or condition is not the same as the individual's diagnosis.) A diagnostic procedure may be performed by various healthcare professionals such as a physician, physiotherapist, dentist, podiatrist, optometrist, nurse practitioner, healthcare scientist or physician assistant. This article uses diagnostician as any of these person categories. A diagnostic procedure (as well as the opinion reached thereby) does not necessarily involve elucidation of the etiology of the diseases or conditions of interest, that is, what caused the disease or condition. Such elucidation can be u
Read more