forThe time I met a neurologist Susan Osoulvan as a patient named Darssi. The 20 -year -old was suffering from daily seizures, so she barely disrupted her house for a year.
Epilepsy is expected to add to its long list already of other diagnoses: migraines, loss of appetite, irritable bowel syndrome, autism, depression, attention deficit/hyperactivity, and the problem of fainting and dizziness called positivism, utensils, and common conditions called hyperactivity.
Osolivan, who quickly acquired epilepsy, came to doubt that the young woman was actually suffering from another common disease: excessive diagnosis.
In her new book, “Diagnostic Age: How to make us the obsession of medical posters worse,“O’Sullivan claims that most doctors who see a large amount of patients regularly face young people with at least some Darcie diagnoses, and often in combination with Tourette syndrome, dyslexia, and a few others. In fact, you see” excessive diagnosis “, where patients receive technically correct medical diagnoses but do not benefit from it greatly.
“I was constantly shocked because many people in their twenties and their thirties could have accumulated many diseases of the disease of this age,” writes Osolivan, who practices national health services in London. “The elderly also. High blood pressure, high cholesterol, rear -low pain, etc. It has become unusual to meet a patient who has no path of previous diagnoses.”
Acute increases in the diagnosis of cancer, dementia, chronic lame disease, and many other cases may indicate that people are mentally healthier and physically than the past. Or, doctors may be better in identifying medical problems, which leads to treatment that improves their health.
The O carellivan book explores another possibility: Are the natural differences between individuals who are diagnosed as medical situations? By getting rid of modern medicine at the examination table, Occanin provides an exciting challenge to think of our common assumptions about the importance of early and accurate diagnosis. Among them, can the results of the test be trusted as facts? Is early intervention the best way to deal with a medical problem? Basically, is there always a better diagnosis?
“I was constantly shocked because many people in their twenties and thirties could have accumulated a lot of disease stickers of this age.”
“The Diagnostic Age” reads like update to “Excessive diagnosis: people pass through the pursuit of health“The 2011 book by H. Gilbert Welch and colleagues who provided convincing evidence that common conditions – high blood pressure, diabetes, osteoporosis, and several types of cancer – are routinely diagnosed.
Blame the blame for excessive detection – examination programs, photography survey, and genetic tests that discover distortions that will never make problems – and agree O’sllivan. In her opinion, some responsibility lies with doctors and scientists who are being tempted by technological progress that allows them to discover potential problems.
But it looks more interested in the role of patients – and the parents of patients – who are demanding diagnosis when life does not continue the way they want. “The expectation of good health is continuous, successful and smooth transition throughout life, which is disappointed when it does not work this way,” she wrote. “Medical interpretations have become the sticks that we use to help us manage this disappointment.”
Do other doctors share her anxiety? The O’sultivan thesis – excessive diagnosis that causes harm – will be strengthened if her book includes other medical sounds. Instead, you focus on interviews with patients, many of whom felt comfortable in their diagnoses, although O’sllivan is afraid they might be moreDiagnosis.
It extends its criticism to the cases that were rare or even not present, but are now commonly diagnosed. In recent decades, these conditions have been redefined to include a wide range of symptoms, with the permission of something called “crawling”.
“This happens when the separation line turns between natural and non -natural slowly, so that people who were considered in good health are attracted over time.
For example, ADHD first appeared in the diagnostic and statistical guide for mental disorders in 1968, described as distracting and anxiety in young children. Many DSM repetitions later, ADHD It can now be applied to people of any age and with a wide range of symptoms and intensity. As of the year 2018, approximately 10 percent Children were diagnosed with hyperactivity disorder and attention lack, according to government investigative studies of parents, compared to less than 6 percent two decades ago. But the centers of control and prevention control say, for several different reasons, it is impossible to know whether the increase reflects an actual change in the number of children with hyperactivity disorder and attention lack or just a change in the number that was diagnosed.
In recent decades, these conditions have been redefined to include a wide range of symptoms, with the permission of something called “crawling”.
Similarly, unite It has become a growing spread; 1 in 31 American children had the diagnosis in 2022, a height of 1 in 150 in 2000. Some specialists believe that high autism rates reflect the real scope of the condition, while others are skeptical – but there is no way to know this definitely because there is no blood test or examination confirming autism. “The entire diagnosis depends on a social agreement on the natural form that the natural behavior should appear,” he writes Osolivan.
O’sllivan does not doubt that hyperactivity disorder, lack of attention and autism are real conditions, but they are wondering whether they are subject to excessive diagnosis. Young children and those who are severely affected by these cases benefit from treatment, but for the elderly and those with more moderate symptoms, O carellivan finds “much lower evidence” that works on interventions.
“This is the biggest sign of excessive diagnosis-much higher rates than detection of diseases but there is no significant improvement in health in the long run,” she wrote.
In contrast, it wonders whether some of the relatively new physical disorders should be considered diseases at all. One of the stations that it refers to is Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, or HEDS, where the joints of the person have a large group of movement unusually. It is one of 13 sub-species of EHlers-Danlos syndrome; Other sub -species cause biochemical changes in connective tissues, and have a known, rare, and severe cause. Since HEDS was identified as a moderate form of EHlers-Danlos syndrome in 1997, it has become the most common form of disorder, although there are no infected diseases or a genetic cause.
But Hypermobile joints-one of the studies is up to 30 percent of healthy adolescents and mid-twenty adolescents-so O carellivan is a personal diagnosis. She wrote: “The biggest difference between a person who is healthy with the joints of a normal hyperboy and a person with pledges,” You write, “The latter may have suffered from pain in the joints and went to the doctor to get advice.”
An excessive risk of diagnosis is that it can lead to painful treatments that patients do not need. Cite it Ticket This indicates an excessive diagnostic rate of 30 percent for breast cancer in women over the age of 70.
Expert in physical mental illness (her book for the year 2016 “Is everything in your head?“He won an award from the Royal Association for Biology), and Osolivan is particularly concerned about the risks of excess diagnosis in individuals with real physical symptoms for psychological reasons.” Now that we have a disturbance sign about almost every type of physical contrast, “I have written all levels of mental pain, and I am afraid that people will express their emotional distress because physical symptoms can all wrestle with the disease.
One of these patients is my school. She was admitted to the hospital under O carellivan, the young woman faced cramps, fainting attacks, and so much dizziness that she was required to help two people if she got out of the bed. But observers that measure their brain waves, heart rate, blood pressure and oxygen levels have not shown any biological cause of their suffering.
“I am afraid that people who express their emotional distress as physical symptoms can be easily confused with the disease.”
O carellivan decided that Darssi was suffering from psychological and mysterious spells, very real but not caused by a physical problem. This made her question some other diagnoses for Darsi. Reviewing the history of the young woman, Osoulivan was speculating with the joints of the “hyperpiece” was within the normal rate and that the school difficulties that led to the diagnosis of autism, hyperactivity disorder and attention lack may be caused by many medical absence. She believes that Darcy, who saw a specialist in the age of 13 years, fell into the “trap of medicine”.
“Whenever I am asked about the symptoms, the more you search for it,” Osoulivan wrote. “In the search for interpretations, she received signs in return. All he did was increasing her healthy anxiety until she was so mired that she developed cramps.”
Darssi rejected the ideas of Osolivan about her other diagnoses, noting that a neurologist should adhere to nerve flags. However, O carellivan is using its case as an Ajeh exhibition that we must wonder why many people suffer from multiple non -relevant diagnoses, which are not originally.
Ordinary experiences, defects, sadness and anxiety increasingly concluded to disturb medical disorders, and concluded: “In other words: We are not exposed to marina – we attribute more to the disease.”
This article was originally published on Unreasonable. Read The original article.
