Diagnostic Strategies For Common Medical Problems

Diagnostic Strategies for Common Medical Problems, second edition, presents the best diagnostic strategies for 51 of the most common patient presentations you're likely to see in a clinical setting. Each chapter is presented in a clear, concise format, allowing you to get the information you need quickly and easily. Filled with practical and cost-effective pathways to solve the problems you see every day, Diagnostic Strategies is an essential tool for any primary care provider.

This book details the logical evaluative steps for interpreting diagnostic information about various common diseases and conditions. In the opening chapters the principles and applications of quantitative decision making are outlined. Subsequent chapters discuss these diagnostic techniques in relation to 49 specific medical problems, including acute pancreatitis, coronary artery disease, hyperthyroidism, and erythrocytosis, among others.

Getting the right diagnosis is a key aspect of health care - it provides an explanation of a patient's health problem and informs subsequent health care decisions. The diagnostic process is a complex, collaborative activity that involves clinical reasoning and information gathering to determine a patient's health problem. According to Improving Diagnosis in Health Care, diagnostic errors-inaccurate or delayed diagnoses-persist throughout all settings of care and continue to harm an unacceptable number of patients. It is likely that most people will experience at least one diagnostic error in their lifetime, sometimes with devastating consequences. Diagnostic errors may cause harm to patients by preventing or delaying appropriate treatment, providing unnecessary or harmful treatment, or resulting in psychological or financial repercussions. The committee concluded that improving the diagnostic process is not only possible, but also represents a moral, professional, and public health imperative. Improving Diagnosis in Health Care, a continuation of the landmark Institute of Medicine reports To Err Is Human (2000) and Crossing the Quality Chasm (2001), finds that diagnosis-and, in particular, the occurrence of diagnostic errorsâ€"has been largely unappreciated in efforts to improve the quality and safety of health care. Without a dedicated focus on improving diagnosis, diagnostic errors will likely worsen as the delivery of health care and the diagnostic process continue to increase in complexity. Just as the diagnostic process is a collaborative activity, improving diagnosis will require collaboration and a widespread commitment to change among health care professionals, health care organizations, patients and their families, researchers, and policy makers. The recommendations of Improving Diagnosis in Health Care contribute to the growing momentum for change in this crucial area of health care quality and safety.

This book utilizes a case study approach to major problems in general and critical care medicine. The physician in training, encountering major disease processes for the first time, will learn how to work up patients and arrive at differential diagnoses. Most importantly, this book teaches the art of clinical reasoning by walking the reader through the clinical decision making process.

Technology assessment can lead to the rapid application of essential diagnostic technologies and prevent the wide diffusion of marginally useful methods. In both of these ways, it can increase quality of care and decrease the cost of health care. This comprehensive monograph carefully explores methods of and barriers to diagnostic technology assessment and describes both the rationale and the guidelines for meaningful evaluation. While proposing a multi-institutional approach, it emphasizes some of the problems involved and defines a mechanism for improving the evaluation and use of medical technology and essential resources needed to enhance patient care.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines diagnosis as: 'Identification of a disease by careful investigation of its symptoms and history' . Regrettably, the value of the history in the diagnosis of disease often seems to be neglected in both undergraduate and postgraduate medical education. The considerable advances in medical technology have made it easy to carry out a multiplicity of tests. As a result, there is frequently an unfortunate tendency to rely on the results of tests before decisions are taken on diagnosis and treatment, even though such tests are often of limited value in the manage ment of the patients. This book is an attempt to redress the balance and place the proper emphasis on the diagnostic value of a well-taken and perspicacious history. The main purpose of the book is to show that most of the clinical problems encountered in daily practice can be dealt with effectively and satisfactorily on the basis of a good clinical history. This should be supplemented by a prob lem-orientated clinical examination, the primary function of which is either to confirm and amplify the diagnosis provided by the history, or to refute it.