If you are like me you probably head to a self diagnosis site on the Internet first when you have a new symptom show up. But have you ever wondered how accurate these symptom checker sites are at diagnosing your illnesses?
When you are already suffering from an illness like Pancreatitis and have some new or worsening symptom it’s always a good idea to make sure that you find out how serious that problem is as soon as you can so you can decide whether you need to head to the ER or know that just scheduling a routine appointment with your Doctor will suffice.
But you might wonder – just how accurate are these self diagnosis sites?
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Who Sponsors These Symptom Checkers
Self Diagnosis Sites are hosted by medical schools, hospital systems, insurance companies, and various government agencies as a quick and easy way for users to determine the severity and type of problem the symptoms they are having might indicate.
Most of the sites use software that asks users to input their symptoms either in text boxes or by checking multiple choice checklists.
Once the symptoms are collected the program provides the user with a list of potential illnesses that might be indicated by those symptoms. Most sites then will also determine how severe the potential problem is and suggest whether the user should seek immediate care, see a Doctor as soon as they can, or rely on self-care methods.
How Do Self Diagnosis Sites Compare To Other Methods
To find out the answer to this question the first wide-scale study looking at the accuracy of these self diagnosis symptom checker websites was recently completed by researchers including the Harvard Medical Schools.
To test the accuracy of the self diagnosis sites researchers created a lists of symptoms that are used to teach and test medical students and then input those symptoms into 23 online self diagnosis sites.
How Accurate Are Self Diagnosis Sites
Overall, the different self diagnosis sites that the researchers studied listed the correct diagnosis first in just 34 percent of cases. It was listed in the top 3 in 51% of the sites and in the top 20 in 58% of the sites.
So, what the study found was that even though the on-line programs are often incorrect, they are still equivalent to the telephone triage lines that are used by many primary care practices.
They are even better when they are compared to using a general internet search that a lot of people turn to for help in diagnosing a symptom.
According to a senior author of the study Ateev Mehrotra who is an associate professor of health care policy and medicine at HMS and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center “These tools may be useful in patients who are trying to decide whether they should get to a doctor quickly, but in many cases, users should be cautious and not take the information they receive from online symptom checkers as gospel.”
Doctors And Self Diagnosis Sites
Even though many of the self diagnosis sites are sponsored by medical schools or hospitals – sometimes even by the hospital that employs them – Doctors on the whole aren’t very excited about these sites.
‘Don’t believe everything you read on the net.’
My partner researches on these sites and then goes to see our Doctor thoroughly convinced that this or that is the problem and tells the Doctor what is happening and what these sites have said.
We have a very good Doctor who listens and spends time with us to make sure that we understand what is happening but even he will sometimes roll his eyes and repeat his belief that you can’t believe everything that you find on the Internet.
At the other end of the spectrum is the Doctors who will just scoff or tell you that these sites are useless.
Some Doctors will even get upset with you if you try to self diagnose and assume that you are a hypochondriac, just looking for things that are wrong.
So my advice, especially when dealing with a Doctor that you don’t have a good relationship with is to let them do the diagnosing. Use the self diagnosis sites as a tool to help decide when you should see a Doctor but then let them do their job.
Final Thoughts On Self Diagnosis Sites
I believe that these sites are a useful tool – if you use them correctly.
All too often if you are like me, you’ll have a symptom or problem and just try to ignore it or figure that you’ll talk to your Doctor at your next appointment.
Where these sites can come in handy is educating us about the symptoms and helping us to determine how crucial the problem might be so we can decide whether it’s something that needs immediate attention or something that can wait.
They also help us become a bit more educated about the symptoms and able to talk to the Doctor and help him do his/her work.
There’s a joke that goes around that on some of these sites 9 out of 10 times they end up telling you that you have cancer. This is probably not true but anything that you find should be taken with a grain of salt.
Until you see your Doctor and get any tests that are needed to actually determine what is going on symptoms are just that, symptoms. And symptoms aren’t exact determinators of problems.
The same symptoms are shared between many diseases and issues and until a trained professional, your Doctor, sees you and uses the symptoms along with his/her observations and runs any required diagnostic tests, you shouldn’t jump the gun and panic about something that you may not even have.
So use self diagnosis sites the way that they are meant to be used, as a tool to help you determine how important it is that you get to a hospital or to see your Doctor. There they will have the other tools that can make sure that you get an accurate diagnosis and the help that you need – if you need any.
