Dr Google to the rescue

21 November 2006

Research in Australia indicates that Google searches can emerge as a valuable resource for physicians in diagnosing rare disorders. Akhila Thyli Hemanth reports.

Physicians often have a problem in diagnosing obscure or perplexing medical conditions. They can now find in Dr Google a ready aid says a study. With the increasing number of medical maladies, it''s unreasonable to expect a doctor to be a walking encyclopedia. Although the brain is quasi computer, there is a limit to how much information it can assimilate and recall at the right time.

Clinical misdiagnosis is still commonplace despite modern diagnostics tools as a result of which patients end up being treated for the wrong illness.

Google, a trusted brand name for reliable searches with a veritable repertoire of information gleaned from its access to an estimated over three billion journals on the web in an easy to use format, may soon be able to provide succor to medicos all over the world.

A team of researchers at Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane, Australia, decided to carry out a study to determine how often Google searches lead doctors to the correct diagnosis.

They identified 26 difficult diagnostic cases published in the case records of the New England Journal of Medicine in 2005 that included rare conditions such as Cushing''s syndrome (a hormonal disorder) Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (a fatal brain disorder) cat scratch disease (swelling of lymph nodes after an animal scratch) which Google identified correctly and one — ''hot tub lung and brain abscess'' which it misdiagnosed.