First, a review of the role of "diagnosis" and diagnostic tests in the basic
medical process (or skip to specific details).
Over the centuries, the practice of health care and medicine has evolved into a complex
system. On a basic level, if a person is sick or ill, he or she wants to become well
again. At this point, people seek the help of their doctor or other certified healthcare
professional.
The first step in fixing any health problem is to determine what is wrong with the
person (patient) who is sick. This is called diagnosing the medical condition or illness
and allows the doctor to recommend or carry out the needed healing process or course of
therapy. Accurate diagnosis of disease is one of the most important aspects of medicine.
Without knowing the identity of a disorder, a doctor can only relieve symptoms such as
pain or fever. It was in the fifth century BC, that the Greek physician Hippocrates
(c.460-377) attempted to identify and describe the course of a particular disease along
with the symptoms. Prior to that, medicine consisted of a collection of various remedies
for certain symptoms and injuries.
The concept of diagnosis and prognosis (an estimate of the outcome of a certain
disease) led physicians to identify diseases from the medical history, which includes the
patient's account of the illness. The patient history remains a fundamental element in
diagnosis.
If you have a bad cold and a headache, the doctor may take your temperature and
determine that you have a fever. This is one step in determining or diagnosing, for
instance, that you have the flu. At this point the doctor can give you medicine to reduce
your fever and help you to recover from the flu.
Simple Hypothetical Example of the Diagnostic Process:
- your doctor observed your basic symptoms (running nose) and ran a simple diagnostic test
(took your temperature to determine you had a fever)
- made a diagnosis (you have a case of the flu)
- recommended a course of therapy ("please take this medical prescription and get
lots of extra rest for the next week").
During that next week, you would either get better, remain the same or possibly get
sicker. If you got better, you might not see the doctor again until perhaps the next
winter when you caught another flu bug. But, if you stayed sick or got sicker, you would
go back to the doctor for more testing and perhaps he would make a different diagnosis.
For instance, the doctor may determine that you did not get the extra rest you needed and
this is why you have not recovered from the flu. Or perhaps the doctor may determine that
you did not have the flu, but through running an additional diagnostic test (for example,
a blood test) that you had mononucleosis. At that point he would recommend a new course of
therapy ("please take this different prescription") based on the new diagnosis
("you have mononucleosis").
Diagnostic Imaging is simply another diagnostic tool like taking your pulse, measuring
your blood pressure or having a blood test. But diagnostic imaging can be more powerful
than these simpler tests as it may provide more information to the doctor on his or her
path to diagnosing your medical problem.
Diagnostic imaging was first performed in 1895 after the discovery of the x-ray by
Professor Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen at the University of Wurzburg in Germany. Over the last
century it has grown to be a very powerful tool in assisting doctors and medical
professionals in correctly diagnosing patient illness and recommending and completing the
necessary therapy so the patient can regain good health. More on
the history of medical diagnosis and diagnostic imaging
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