3 ms·

> When 80-90% of people visiting the doctor for “flu” don’t really have it, you can hardly expect their internet searches to be a reliable source of information

by j2kun 13y ago

> When 80-90% of people visiting the doctor for “flu” don’t really have it, you can hardly expect their internet searches to be a reliable source of information. I just attended a talk that graphed the rate of physicians' diagnoses versus the truth, and the conclusion was that about half of physicians drastically overestimate, too (and it's far more than double, closer to five times more!). So when 80-90% of people visiting the doctor for flu don't really have it and those doctors often make type II errors, you can hardly expect their diagnoses to be a reliable source of information.

nraynaud 13y ago
flu is like the communist, everybody is afraid of it, everybody believe they have seen one, but upon serious examination we can't find one. I guess the flu epidemic is just a conspiration created to distract us from the fact that nobody walked on the moon or something. On a more serious note, what's exactly the deal with misdiagnosis? If the real thing is another virus, it could also be a virus that we should treat in a similar manner? Or the doctors are loosing precious time often with a wrong first diagnosis in a significant number of cases?
- Fomite 13y ago
  Diagnosing viral illness is a pain. There are a huge number of winter circulating viruses with roughly the same pattern as the flu, and diagnostic tests for influenza are often very specific but not very sensitive. Meaning if they come up positive, you have it, but if they come up negative...shrug Beyond that, no, it's not likely to be a virus treated in a similar manner. If by manner you mean "drugs". Oseltamivir (aka Tamiflu) only works against influenza, so if you have RSV or some other virus, it won't do you much good. The other way to handle viral diseases is to let them run their course and manage the complications, at which point a strictly accurate diagnosis isn't particularly necessary. TL;DR: It's very hard, fairly expensive, and the payoff per-patient isn't strong.

by j2kun 13y ago

nraynaud 13y ago

flu is like the communist, everybody is afraid of it, everybody believe they have seen one, but upon serious examination we can't find one. I guess the flu epidemic is just a conspiration created to distract us from the fact that nobody walked on the moon or something. On a more serious note, what's exactly the deal with misdiagnosis? If the real thing is another virus, it could also be a virus that we should treat in a similar manner? Or the doctors are loosing precious time often with a wrong first diagnosis in a significant number of cases?

Fomite 13y ago
Diagnosing viral illness is a pain. There are a huge number of winter circulating viruses with roughly the same pattern as the flu, and diagnostic tests for influenza are often very specific but not very sensitive. Meaning if they come up positive, you have it, but if they come up negative...shrug Beyond that, no, it's not likely to be a virus treated in a similar manner. If by manner you mean "drugs". Oseltamivir (aka Tamiflu) only works against influenza, so if you have RSV or some other virus, it won't do you much good. The other way to handle viral diseases is to let them run their course and manage the complications, at which point a strictly accurate diagnosis isn't particularly necessary. TL;DR: It's very hard, fairly expensive, and the payoff per-patient isn't strong.