The Age of Diagnosis by Suzanne O’Sullivan review – are we really getting sicker? | Health, mind and body books
andOr many years, people who lived in Lyme, Contect, had mysterious symptoms similar to influenza, rash and joint pain. Patients were convinced that their symptoms were related to the deer who wandered in the nearby forests and ticks, who often found clinging to their clothes. But since the symptoms were very unlimited and there was no treatment, doctors rejected the symptoms as psychological.
Then in 1975, which raised his concern about the high rates of juvenile arthritis in Lyme, the Connecticut Ministry decided to investigate. It took seven years, but in the end, in 1982, they identified a spiral in the middle of the tick of deer that was also present in the blood of patients. All it takes to stir this disorder is that a sign of an infected victim is placed and bacteria pumped under its skin.
Today, there are two tests for Lyme and most cases that respond to treatment with a course of antibiotics. However, as with other syndromes that are difficult to determine, this is not the end of the story. This is because the laboratory test alone is not sufficient for the rule of Lyme disease inside or outside. The sensitive tests can be produced excessively false positives, while the examinations that have been calibrated can produce wrong negatives. In order for the diagnostic test to be considered, the patient must also have a possibility of a pre -test of the infection of Lyme disease. But this is the ruling that the doctor who took a detailed history in a detailed condition could not be issued, proved that the patient suffers from typical symptoms of others, and that they were in a settlement area in Lyme disease. In other words, Lyme’s disease, like any other medical condition, has a large autoimmune and the diagnosis is an art as it is science.
Doctors have been aware of this paradox for the time of Hippocrates-in fact, the history of medicine can be considered an attempt to diagnose the scientific director by devising the role that microbes, environmental pollutants, genes and social psychological pressures in the disease play. But because medicine has become more advanced and we have developed more sensitive tests and treatments, it has gained more and more people with diagnostic stickers. Susan Osoulivan, who has been a neuroscience consultant since 2004 The age of diagnosisThis can be a good thing if the diagnosis increases understanding and improving treatments, but not if the diagnosis is not permanently as we believe and risk members of medicine without long -term interest in their health.
For example, it was reported that up to half a million people in Australia suffer from Lyme’s disease, although Lyme is not present in Australia. Throughout the world, the situation has an exaggerated rate of 85 %. Or consider autism. Fifty years ago, autism was said to affect four out of every 10,000 people. today , Publication all over the world is one in every 100 In the United Kingdom, autism diagnosis 787 % increased between 1998 and 2018. Likewise, the percentage of diagnostic disorder disorder (ADHD), a term made for the first time in 1987 to describe children full of people who had difficulty focusing, It has doubled in boys and doubled three times between girls between 2000 and 2018 Today the diagnosis is increasingly applied to adults.
But what if these reported increases do not reflect an actual increase in the spread of these cases, but examples of “diagnostic crawl”? O’soulivan also writes: “Medical problems in the border line may become iron diagnoses and that natural differences are done … In other words: we are not exposed to marina – we are more attributed to the disease.”
This is not just a problem for those whose behaviors have once seen at the normal rate and the disease is now done. It is also a problem for those who, thanks to the most accurate genetic testing techniques, are told that they may be at risk of cancer that may not continue to develop. Is it better to be warning, you are carrying a Brac genetic mutation that puts you at the risk of breast cancer by 40-85 % and facing a dilemma if you have preventive breast removal, or is it better not to burden yourself with a painful decision that may be unnecessary? What about projects such as a newborn examination program in the United Kingdom, which aims to test healthy children, apparently to predict the future dangerous health conditions so that it can be treated in the first possible stage or even before the symptoms begin?
These considerations become of increasing importance because medicine improves the diagnosis of previously prevalent cases, without necessarily able to provide a treatment or treatment that leads to improvements in real life. Nobody wants to tell a child that they have a great danger of dementia in the distant future or mobilize them by diagnosing Huntington’s disease – a genetic condition that is not processable and which usually becomes clear in the 1940s. This is the reason that examining genetic diseases in childhood-is limited to those who have expected genetics and as early treatment is likely to have a difference in health and longevity. “The goal of enabling people to reach early intervention to protect the health of their child in the future, and not the weight of a child with an inevitable fate,” he writes Osolivan.
In the case of circumstances such as autism and ADHD, O’sllivan is afraid that it will be too late. It indicates that the diagnostic and statistical guide for mental disorders (DSM) is used to define the disorder of hyperactivity and lack of attention as childhood that disappeared in adolescence. But with the introduction of the term attention deficit disorder (ADD) in the 1980 edition of DSM, both ADD and ADHD were extended to the old and older age groups. The result today is that ADHD (the most common term) is no longer expected to grow from. Instead, the mark has become essential for many peoples. This will not be a problem if the diagnosis leads to improvements in life, but O carellivan states that many people with hyperactivity disorder and lack of attention to them have left work and education and became interested in their friends. “I saw a disturbing gap between the perceived benefit of the diagnosis and any actual improvements in the quality of life,” she wrote.
O’sllivan concludes The age of diagnosis By reminding us that the duty of the first doctor is “not to cause any harm.” Its main concern is that we have become so excited about the latest technologies and advanced diagnoses that we have not taken time to properly weight their potential damage. For this reason, before reaching the latest technological solutions, she says, doctors need to listen closely to their patients. With the same path, patients must realize that good health is not fixed, and that it is unrealistic that doctors expect to provide a solution to everyone, and that the drug is not a plaster attached to every behavioral and social problem.
