Re: Up To A Million Kids Misdiagnosed!

[Wgreen]

Interesting indeed.

But consider: A parent, armed with information gleaned online, walks into a pediatrician’s office and says, “I think my child may have ADD.” The pediatrician has, what?, seven-ten minutes to spend with a patient? So he/she asks a few questions and says, “Hmmmm. Maybe you’re right. I’ll prescribe some ‘XYZ,’ and we’ll see if that helps.” At that point the doctor moves on and it becomes up to the parent to make (in many instances, confirm) his/her own diagnosis based on what she observes at home, or thinks she observes, after the child starts taking a medication (the trial-and-error approach). With doctors overwhelmed by patient workload, forced to prioritize based on the severity of illness, and staggered by the vast quantity of new medical research/information coming at them like a freight train (information that needs to be assimilated), it’s amazing they can function at all. Frankly, under these circumstances, it’s hard for me to imagine that millions of patients aren’t misdiagnosed annually for all sorts of things.

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