No, they're not. (A) focuses on things that are easy. (B) focuses on things that are ambiguous. Their appearance is often a subset of (a). edit: I wanted to c

No, they're not. (A) focuses on things that are easy. (B) focuses on things that are ambiguous. Their appearance is often a subset of (a). edit: I wanted to clarify. Asking "is it this common, easily diagnosed (meaning: it has very specific features that can be easily elucidated by testing or physical examination) thing?" does not comprise a set of items that, if iterated, tells you what a patient has. Difficult diagnoses are made when things are rare, sure, but more commonly because they're ambiguous, polymorphic, and/or dynamic. Iterating through lists of (a) does not give you (b) - often, not even through a Holmesian process of elimination. Turns out medicine is hard?