Differential Diagnosis

Question 1

What is a differential diagnosis?

Answer 1

-The process by which clinicians consider some possible causes of the patients signs & symptoms before making a final diagnosis.
-After gathering info from patient, they compare this info to one’s understanding of different conditions to create multiple hypothesis.

Question 2

What not go with your first guess?

Answer 2

Often to wrong.
The most common conditions are typically not the most serious & the consequences of missing a serious diagnosis are higher.

Question 3

What is the availability heuristic?

Answer 3

• Tendency to use information that comes to mind quickly & easily
• Favours recent or more memorable experiences

Question 4

What is possibilism?

Answer 4

-technically impossible to make a list of all probabilities.
-takes a long time & list tends to be confusingly long
-can lead to unnecessary testing/ diagnostic work up

-beginners may make excessively long/ extremely short lists based on misconceptions about the medical diagnosis (possibilism)

Question 5

What is included in a strong list of differentials?

Answer 5

1. Probability: what is most likely?
   “most common”
2. Prognosis: “must not miss” conditions - which conditions are worse if left untreated
   “more serious”
3. Pragmatism: What conditions have the best benefit:harm ratio if treated
   “most treatable”

Question 6

When to start considering conditions? What happens when you start too early?

Answer 6

After gathering a bit of information from the patient.
-if you start to early, the list will be pointlessly long
-gathering some info first allows for more effective comparison with your disease illness scripts

Question 7

What is the main value of differential diagnosis?

Answer 7

It allows for the possibility that the initial beliefs about the diagnosis were incorrect, facilitating better decision making.

Question 8

What aids differential diagnosis?

Answer 8

Appropriate problem representation (illness scripts).