Issue link: https://viewer.e-digitaledition.com/i/56100
SPECIAL FEATURE of Patient Internet Self-Diagnosis The Promise and Pitfalls IT IS A ROUTINE DAY AT YOUR PRACTICE, AND YOU'RE MAKING YOUR WAY TO AN EXAM ROOM TO SEE YOUR NEXT PATIENT. AS YOU WALK INTO THE ROOM, YOU GREET THE PATIENT, A WOMAN VISITING YOU FOR THE FIRST TIME. YOU NOTICE WHAT APPEARS TO BE A THICK STACK OF INTERNET PRINTOUTS POKING UP FROM THE DEPTHS OF HER SHOULDER BAG, AND YOUR HEART SINKS. YOU'VE ENCOUNTERED PATIENTS WHO ATTEMPT TO SELF-DIAGNOSE USING THE INTERNET BEFORE, AND YOU KNOW NO GOOD CAN COME OF IT. W HAT'S WRONG WITH this scenario? Quite a lot, actually, but the patient isn't the only person at fault. Before considering the pros and cons of patients using the Internet to seek out health information, think about this: Use of the Internet isn't going away — in fact, it only stands to increase. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 43% of men ages 18 to 64 and 58% of women in the same age range sought medical information on the Internet between January and June 2009. More recent reports state that eight out of 10 people surf the Web for insights into their health. The abundance of health information available online and the ease with which it can be accessed make patient usage of the Internet a phenomenon that's here to stay, and one that physicians must accept and adapt to. First, the Bad As all physicians are aware, patients using the Internet to try to uncover the cause of symptoms they experience has a dangerous drawback: the possibility that patients will believe inaccurate information they find online, which could cause them to doubt or not follow their physicians' advice. Only 25% of the 80% of people who comb the Internet for 12 | Central New York MD NEWS ■ MDNEWS.COM medical information bother to verify the veracity of their sources before diagnos- ing themselves. Occasional, informed Web surfi ng for health information is one thing, but spending hours online in pursuit of a diagnosis is quite another. If a patient turns to the Internet to diagnose every cough or ache and — after disregarding her physician's fi ndings — convinces herself she is seriously ill, she may have cyberchondria, a term coined to describe Internet-guided self-diagnosis that becomes obsessive. Physicians, of course, are rightly concerned about the consequences of patient self-diagnosis, both for patients' health and the damage the practice can do to physician/patient relationships. Online research can undermine the physician/patient relationship in multiple ways. Typing a symptom into a search engine can yield hundreds of results that connect the symptom to myriad medical conditions, which may lead to unreliable information. If Internet research causes a patient to believe her symptom is a result of something innocuous, she may make the potentially harmful mistake of not bothering to see a physician at all. Patients lack the necessary training to realize that some symptoms are much more likely to be caused by certain conditions than others. In the absence of this knowledge, a patient may come to the