Welcome to DiagnosisDude.com, an educational blog about medical diagnosis, one symptom at a time, geared for students & new professionals. It encapsulates over 30 years of the author’s experience, anecdotes, pearls, pitfalls, tricks, PubMed searches, & literature reviews. And, occasionally, the very best teacher of all — really bad outcomes [hopefully those of others, not one’s own]. It deals primarily with adults and school-age children, in an out-patient setting.
Discussi0ns of symptom work-ups are meant to be both thorough and casual. We’re not a textbook. DiagnosisDude may serve as a clinical resource, but also as 5-10 minutes of easy reading, hopefully imparting some interesting insights, available to reread when the time is right.
The different topics we’ve covered (mostly chief complaints, some diseases) all appear on the right-hand margin under “Prior Posts,” by clicking the “down” arrow. If you access the site from a phone, be sure to scroll right; some people have followed text, and clicked menus at the top, without realizing there’s also a long list of symptoms on the side at the beginning.
In the “About” menu at top, “Nutshells” can serve as an Index if you want to scroll thru a long list of diseases. All these capsule summaries can also be accessed from the different “Reference Tables” at the top. Unfortunately, the blogsite’s “Search” option doesn’t work usefully, so is not activated.
Be sure to read “Intro To Diagnosis” under the “About” menu. You can also read the “Acknowledgements” & “Disclaimer” (and even the “Bio”, if you’re curious/bored enough to want to know anything about the author). “XtraMisc” in the “About” menu is simply a spot for linking various text to; couldn’t arrange a separate parking place. They make more sense when accessed from the original post.
If you’ve just discovered this blog, you may find yourself in the middle of a symptom work-up (e.g. “Acute Cough – 2”). So you may want to first read prior posts on the topic (see right-hand margin). If you feel like starting from first posting (“Worst Headache Ever”), click here.
The “Follow” button for subscribing to this blog wasn’t working at first, but now it seems to be. New subscribers might receive an automatic WordPress email confirmation, including an advertisement for “Great Content” with links that promptly warn you ‘Connection Untrusted.’ Please ignore this — just navigate via the blog. Diagnosing ill patients seems easier than troubleshooting in cyberspace.
COMMENTS — would greatly appreciate them. Please post your thoughts — what helped, what didn’t, what in your opinion was downright wrong. Share your own outstanding diagnoses, less-than-brilliant flubs, & perhaps precautionary bad outcomes [of “someone you know”]. Any diagnostic quandaries that other readers or DiagnosisDude might help with? Any burning topics you’d like to see? Thanx so much!
Please Enjoy!
DiagnosisDude 