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Doctors use Google for diagnosis

Search for spots
Fri Nov 10 2006, 09:20
MORE THAN 60 percent of doctors search on Google when they diagnose tricky cases.

According to the Daily Mail, a study carried out by the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane, said that a lot of doctors were using Google searches to diagnose more obscure illnesses like Cushing's syndrome and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

The report seems to find this sensible as doctors cannot be expected to carry all the facts in their head. However, it does point out that 45 percent of the time they make a misdiagnosis when they did.

Apparently the better they are at searching, and the more knowledge they have, the more likely they will be to get the right diagnosis.

It looks like the more big medical words you know such as immunodeficiency and polyendocrinopathy, the less likely you will end up on a quack page that advocates a course of leeches and a liberal rubbing to the infected area with a live badger. µ

L'INQ
Camp Times

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