If you find a disease after searching for symptoms online, your hypothesis may be almost as close to that particular disease as reported in a new report. According to a study conducted by Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Howard Medical School Health Policy Department, people are more likely to accurately diagnose their loved one’s disease by searching for symptoms online.
Further study participants search for symptom-related diseases online to find out the severity of the symptoms they have. Do they need to see a doctor immediately? Or wait a while? Decide that. Furthermore, the study found that participants did not have much concern about the symptoms they experienced. One of the authors of the study said, “Our study suggests that it is OK to tell patients to ‘Google’.”
For this study, the researchers asked about 5,000 people to read and give records of patients with various symptoms. They were then asked to make a diagnosis accordingly. Participants were also asked to search for signs online. Through this the participants gave details of the diseases they had diagnosed. The diagnostic details found online and the actual diagnosis of the patients were found to be more accurate according to the indications given to the participants.
There were also some limitations for participants in this study. That is, participants were asked to imagine that the person experiencing the symptoms was the one closest to them. And if a person finds a disease online with symptoms, it is not clear in this study whether it is really relevant to him. This is because the participants in this study only examined the symptoms of other patients online.
Is it better to Google the symptoms?
Using online to find the cause of a serious symptom can lead to unnecessary stress. Especially if you have a simple rash problem and searching online will tell you that you may have skin cancer. Thus doctors say that looking for your symptoms can lead to misdiagnosis and wrong treatment. There are 23 websites that provide information on diagnosis and treatment. The study explained that they came first only 34 percent of the time in the search for an accurate diagnosis. Therefore, it is more important to get Alone from a doctor or medical consultant than to search online for symptoms.
