Types

Sub-types of diagnoses include:

Clinical diagnosis

A diagnosis made on the basis of medical signs and reported symptoms, rather than diagnostic tests

Laboratory diagnosis

A diagnosis based significantly on laboratory reports or test results, rather than the physical examination of the patient. For instance, a proper diagnosis of infectious diseases usually requires both an examination of signs and symptoms, as well as laboratory test results and characteristics of the pathogen involved.

Radiology diagnosis

A diagnosis based primarily on the results from medical imaging studies. Greenstick fractures are common radiological diagnoses.

Tissue diagnosis

A diagnosis based on the macroscopic, microscopic, and molecular examination of tissues such as biopsies or whole organs. For example, a definitive diagnosis of cancer is made via tissue examination by a pathologist.

Principal diagnosis

The single medical diagnosis that is most relevant to the patient's chief complaint or need for treatment. Many patients have additional diagnoses.

Admitting diagnosis

The diagnosis given as the reason why the patient was admitted to the hospital; it may differ from the actual problem or from the discharge diagnoses, which are the diagnoses recorded when the patient is discharged from the hospital.

Differential diagnosis

A process of identifying all of the possible diagnoses that could be connected to the signs, symptoms, and lab findings, and then ruling out diagnoses until a final determination can be made.

Diagnostic criteria

Designates the combination of signs, symptoms, and test results that the clinician uses to attempt to determine the correct diagnosis. They are standards, normally published by international committees, and they are designed to offer the best sensitivity and specificity possible, respect the presence of a condition, with the state-of-the-art technology.

Prenatal diagnosis

Diagnosis work done before birth

Diagnosis of exclusion

A medical condition whose presence cannot be established with complete confidence from history, examination or testing. Diagnosis is therefore by elimination of all other reasonable possibilities.

Dual diagnosis

The diagnosis of two related, but separate, medical conditions or co-morbidities. The term almost always referred to a diagnosis of a serious mental illness and a substance addiction, however, the increasing prevalence of genetic testing has revealed many cases of patients with multiple concomitant genetic disorders.

Self-diagnosis

The diagnosis or identification of a medical conditions in oneself. Self-diagnosis is very common.

Remote diagnosis

A type of telemedicine that diagnoses a patient without being physically in the same room as the patient.

Nursing diagnosis

Rather than focusing on biological processes, a nursing diagnosis identifies people's responses to situations in their lives, such as a readiness to change or a willingness to accept assistance.

Computer-aided diagnosis

Providing symptoms allows the computer to identify the problem and diagnose the user to the best of its ability. Health screening begins by identifying the part of the body where the symptoms are located; the computer cross-references a database for the corresponding disease and presents a diagnosis.

Overdiagnosis

The diagnosis of "disease" that will never cause symptoms, distress, or death during a patient's lifetime

Wastebasket diagnosis

A vague, or even completely fake, medical or psychiatric label given to the patient or to the medical records department for essentially non-medical reasons, such as to reassure the patient by providing an official-sounding label, to make the provider look effective, or to obtain approval for treatment. This term is also used as a derogatory label for disputed, poorly described, overused, or questionably classified diagnoses, such as pouchitis and senility,citation needed or to dismiss diagnoses that amount to overmedicalization, such as the labeling of normal responses to physical hunger as reactive hypoglycemia.

Retrospective diagnosis

The labeling of an illness in a historical figure or specific historical event using modern knowledge, methods and disease classifications.