I'm not sure I agree. While technically bronchitis could be any inflammation of the brochial tubes, a diagnosis of bronchitis usually means that that it's the

I'm not sure I agree. While technically bronchitis could be any inflammation of the brochial tubes, a diagnosis of bronchitis usually means that that it's the patient's major problem. It'd be odd to describe a cancer as "bronchitis" even if it involved brochi. So you do learn something, in a Griceian sense, from the relatively uninformative diagnosis. There's also the implication that there are some tools for managing it, the doctor's seen it before, etc all of which are reassuring.