[karcass]

My wife had a tumor on her pituitary gland. Four different MDs came up empty on her symptoms. The fourth doctor ran the right endocrine system test, but was only able to conclude "it's not [her] thyroid."

It took me about thirty minutes with the test results and Google to make the diagnosis. I was lucky, in that I had a colleague who was acquainted with the head of Stanford endocrinology, who confirmed the diagnosis and found us a good surgeon. Wife is fine today.

It's anecdotal, but my experience with the medical system is that nearly all doctors see the same handful of things day in and day out, and are not trained to see beyond their expertise.

[ClassyJacket]

That's awful. I, too, have turned to Google M.D. before.

I went to five different doctors for throat discomfort and chest pain. The first four didn't see anything in my mouth, so told me I can't be having any symptoms if they don't see anything after a two second glance at my mouth and refused to do anything further.

I was in enough discomfort I lost sleep, and after a few months of these symptoms I couldn't stop thinking the worst.

I had to practically threaten the last doctor to do an infection test which turned out a positive result for mono. Not my imagination after all.

As for my chest, I described my symptoms to my mother, who almost immediately suggested acid reflux. Sure enough, as later confirmed by a throat specialist, that's what it was, and the medication fixed my symptoms pretty much the next day.

If you're a young male, doctors don't want anything to do with you. I usually Google things and make my own decisions now. I've started to view GPs as nothing but an unfortunate barrier on my way to a useful prescription or specialist.

[randlet]

"If you're a young male, doctors don't want anything to do with you. I usually Google things"

I'm sorry you had a bad experience, but as a young man who had recent health issues this wasn't my experience at all.

[newprint]

Mind you asking,but did you have a cough as well ? When I turned 31, I started to have a cough, soon I found-out that I had acid-reflux.

[kchoudhu]

Especially in winter, after you get sick once with a cough? Doctor took one look at me, and told me to take a Zantac twice a day for three days.

Cough was gone. It was miraculous!

[ClassyJacket]

Oh yeah, I think I did. It was worse in the cold, like if I walked into an air conditioned room. This was two years ago now though so I might be misremembering some symptoms.

[xbmcuser]

This is why I feel AI could be the greatest help in diagnosing diseases. Mds learn to identify problems through expierence you could feed millions of cases into an AI it would start diagnosing better than the avg MD or at least list the most likely diseases for the MD to check.

[lbatx]

Already done. IBM Watson has been doing this for more than three years. Was world class already in 2014.

http://www.businessinsider.com/ibms-watson-may-soon-be-the-b...

[dorfsmay]

The article doesn't mention public access. I assume it's not available?

I'd pay a small fee to get access!

[ladytron]

I recently diagnosed a rare disease of late pregnancy, Choleostasis, in one of my friends at 34 weeks. She had been complaining of itching. Google and reading a bunch of research papers made me 95% sure of the diagnosis. I sent her to the hospital to confirm and get the necessary tests. The doctors there were completely unhelpful. Two of them tried to send her home. I balked, fought the Drs., and asked to see an endocrinology specialist. He walked in and agreed with me after about 5 minutes.

At this point she was admitted and being monitored 24/7. Her OB was in Hawaii and getting back in a few days. I told her straight out to ignore the Drs. And nurses at the hospital. She was only allowed to speak to me or the specialist, and disregard anything the regular staff said.

It amazed me that the staff had a diagnosis confirmed with a test yet they still gave her the wrong information because she did not fit the regular pregnant woman profile they were used to pushing through their assembly line.

Her Dr. got back and delivered the baby the next day as the monitor showed it going into distress. He said the hospital lost 2/3 babies every year from Choleostasis, yet Drs. seldom acted on symptoms and treated it correctly.

Scary.

[ladytron]

Btw I'm no Dr. But I can read Google.

Richard Feynman wrote about how when his wife got sick he figured out that she had TB, but because he was very young and a physicist her family and their doctors ignored him and his diagnosis. He acquiesed and did not push, which he later regretted.

He said that only after they had tried many other approaches and wasted time did the Drs come to the same conclusion, but by then it was too late for her.

At that point her realized he was much smarter than regular MDs and never took their word as gospel from that point on.

That story stuck in my head as my friends and family have had medical challenges.

[noir_lord]

I listen to my doctors, I write down everything they say and then I do my own research later.

I have a relatively rare spinal condition and I've only seen 2 out of about a dozen doctors who knew what it was before they googled it and one of those gave me figures I'd already seen in a research paper I'd read and the other had less knowledge about my condition than I did.

I don't blame them since there are literally thousands of medical conditions and a lot of them fall on the long tail in terms of what they see on a day to day basis.

I'm not afraid of disagreeing with my doctors anymore though since often I know as much about my condition as they do.

It would be better if they didn't affect an air of omniscience sometimes though.

The only reason they found the condition at all was because I had an A&E (ER) Doc tell me to go back to the GP and demand an MRI on my spine, he was a good doc, he knew something wasn't right.

[3131s]

My mom is a former nurse and she essentially diagnosed her catamenial pneumothorax (a collapsed lung that co-occurs with menstruation). Apparently elevated estrogen levels during menstruation can cause endometriosis in the chest cavity which creates punctures in the lungs. It's extremely rare so perhaps doctors didn't consider it, but she noticed it by keeping a log of when her pain was occurring. Originally more than one doctor missed the pneumothorax itself on chest X-rays and CT scans over a period of many years. She unfortunately underwent a procedure to remove part of her collapsed lung that left her with chronic pain before realizing the 'catamenial' aspect, meaning that a simple hysterectomy to induce menopause would solve the problem.

[ajmurmann]

Your mom's story and the one on the article really want me to track as many bio stats on a regular basis as possible. Ideally there would be done kind of centralized system that monitors them and also identified patterns across the population. To me that's obviously the future of medicine. Only the privacy issues are a real concern. The technical challenges (measuring the values cheaply and AI) will be overcome.

[tiatia]

I totally agree on that.

I expect computers to outclass MDs very soon. Likely an Android will interview you and a MD will just have a look on the diagnosis (XX% chance for a XX% chance for b, make test A,B and C to rule B out).

[Dylan16807]

Why would you use a massively complicated and expensive robot to do an interview instead of a speaker and a microphone?

Unless you mean a tablet running android, in which case I agree.

[tiatia]

How long do you need to build the Robot?

How long do you need to build an MD?

I don't think IBM build Watson to win Jeopardy.