[DantesKite]

> If your wife had hemoglobin that low, then she was correctly diagnosed with anemia.

That seems like a somewhat myopic perspective.

Saying this patient was "correctly diagnosed with anemia" would be like diagnosing a cancer patient currently undergoing chemotherapy with male pattern baldness.

A more accurate and helpful diagnosis would probably be something like "Babesiosis"——anemia caused by ticks infected with a microbe that destroys red blood cells especially considering the multiple cofactors at play. Or whatever it was that specifically caused the anemia; the parent comment didn't say.

[danachow]

Dude, I'm just addressing this: "So things that can look like anemia can be other things! Case in point, my wife was misdiagnosed for months with Anemia."

Which is a bit of a confused statement.

> Saying this patient was "correctly diagnosed with anemia" would be like diagnosing a cancer patient currently undergoing chemotherapy with male pattern baldness.

No, that's a pretty shit analogy and completely wrong. First, because chemotherapy doesn't cause "male pattern baldness" - the mechanisms aren't the same. So that's just wrong - while someone with a hemoglobin of 4 has anemia, whatever the underlying cause may be - it isn't a look alike - it is.

Second, diagnosing Alopecia (secondary to chemotherapy) is a perfectly reasonable diagnosis. Because it is something that doctors do manage with specific things separately from the chemotherapy and other cancer treatment, eg wigs, scalp cooling.

People can have more than one relevant diagnosis that they are treated for and are interrelated. For instance, if someone has anemia that is due to something like a GI bleed, they have both a GI bleed and anemia. If their hemoglobin is less than 7 you will likely treat that anemia with a blood transfusion independent of what you're doing to manage the GI bleed. GI bleed, iron deficiency, malabsorption, microcytic anemia are all diagnoses - they may be all interrelated.

> A more accurate and helpful diagnosis would probably be something like "Babesiosis"--anemia caused by ticks

But babesiosis is not anemia. It often occurs with it, but the diagnostic criteria for babesiosis is blood smear or PCR. If someone has a smear positive for babesia then they have babesiosis regardless of their Hgb/Hct.

And notably they listed a bunch of tick borne illnesses listed, babesiosis was not among them.

[medymed]

Right idea generally but in that scenario it would be like making a diagnosis of alopecia which just means hair loss. In any case some diagnoses don’t have clear explanations or subdivisions for decades or centuries until explanatory medical science catches up with the descriptive diagnoses like anemia or alopecia.