Posted by Dr. Jerome Groopman, whose writing I generally enjoy, put out a book a couple of years ago called How Doctors Think. It examined, well, how doctors think, how they think they think, and what the future holds for diagnosing disease. It’s a good book, but with some faulty assumptions. I’m not the guy to write about how decisions are made—I don’t know enough about the field, a field which needs much more research. But most doctors do not, as is sometimes posited, make diagnoses via algorithm. Nor are we slavishly bound to statistical likelihood, as the use of likelihood ratios and, er, the like has some problems. What we do teach formally is the process of differential diagnosis.
Differential diagnosis (DDx) is the fun part of medical thinking, and hopefully the lessons learned about the process endure. When a resident or medical student presents a case to me, they often have an immediate feeling for what is wrong with the patient. This feeling may or may not coincide with reality. Getting a gestalt feeling for a case is important, but it is only a starting point. One of the gestalts I like my residents to get a feel for is whether a patient is really sick—I don’t mean whether or not they have a cold or whatever, but do they appear seriously ill. There are parameters which can help determine this, but when someone comes in with a vague picture and you don’t have access to sophisticated diagnostic equipment, it’s good to be able to make that judgment.
One of the luxuries of being a teaching physician is being able to take the time to break down a case in a more formal manner and to develop a traditional differential diagnosis.
One way to do this is to present very little information to start
with. For example, if a student tells me a patient is anemic (has a low
red blood cell count) I may stop them and ask them what, very broadly,
can cause anemia.
- Loss of blood
- Decreased production of blood
- Destruction of red blood cells
- Sequestration of red blood cells
- Other
Then we can look at the evidence to make some guesses as to what may
be causing anemia in this patient. Are they bleeding? Do they have a
big spleen? In addition to these broad categories, we can look at
different categories of cause, or “etiology”. What disease categories
can cause anemia?
- Trauma
- Neoplasia (cancer)
- Immune-mediated disease
- Etc.
This process often takes place implicitly, but I prefer to make it
explicit as often as possible. Once we’ve laid out the thought process,
we can look at the evidence presented by the patient herself and start
to cross out possibilities. For example, if the patient isn’t obviously
bleeding, her stool is tested negative for occult blood, she no longer
menstruates, and has no evidence of internal bleeding, then acute blood
loss seems unlikely as an explanation. If the labs show normal red
blood cell morphology, but decreased kidney function, then decreased of
red cell production due to kidney failure seems more likely. If she has
poor kidney function, her red cells appear deformed, and her platelet
count is also low, this opens up another door.
Differential diagnosis stands in stark contrast to fake medical thinking. If you look at how some alternative practitioners think,
you see the evil, goatee’d twin of differential diagnosis, in which
someone ignores biology and comes up with elaborate explanations for
disease which bear little resemblance to reality.
Differential takes the implicit and makes it explicit. It forces us to
think of all possibilities and winnow them down to the most likely
answers. It’s also a helluva lot of fun. Perhaps we will have a few
morning report cases here where we follow this process. If you want to
submit a case, go ahead, and I’ll turn it into a post so we can all
play. If you do submit a case, please remember that privacy is a must,
both legally and ethically.
September 28, 2009
September 28, 2009
September 28, 2009
September 28, 2009
September 28, 2009
September 28, 2009
September 28, 2009
September 28, 2009
September 29, 2009
September 29, 2009
September 29, 2009
The point was DDx is an algorithm but you can’t write it in software, much less teach a computer to perform.
September 30, 2009
October 1, 2009
October 1, 2009
October 1, 2009
October 1, 2009
October 1, 2009