Self diagnosis via online websites leads to stress
Doctors are increasingly coming across patients between 25 and 35 years who book appointments online and directly meet specialists even before they see a general physician. They search online for information about their symptoms and virtually come up with their own diagnosis.
Like this 34-year-old techie, who recently returned from Boston. He thought he was suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome when he experienced pain near his right wrist. A few years ago, a colleague in the US had a similar problem and the techie assumed he had it too.
For Dr Anand VK, consultant neurosurgeon, Narayana Super Specialty Hospital, Whitefield, Bangalore, the techie was one among many such cases where the patient assumes he knows the disorder even before meeting the doctor.
‘It’s a new lifestyle disorder. They immediately google the symptoms and presume they have some serious problem and walk into multi-specialty hospitals, sometimes after self-medication too. In many cases, there won’t be having any health issue at all, just fear,’ says Dr Anand.
The Boston-returned techie had some tests done in the US. ‘He didn’t believe reports which said he was normal. He began visiting specialists in Bengaluru and even took medicines after some online searching. When he came to me, I didn’t prescribe any medicines as he was not suffering from anything. He started taking neuropathic drugs as pain killers but somehow it had no effect on him,’ added Dr Anand.
The patient finally got better after counseling. ‘They are not psychiatric patients, but reading irrelevant information on the internet caused them unnecessary worry ,’ Dr Anand said.
According to Dr Narayan Hulse, director of orthopaedics, Fortis Hospital, such patients don’t know what to search. ‘A 28-year-old techie com plained of sciatica, pain going down the leg from the lower back due to disc prolapse. All he had was lower back pain since he sat for long hours at the workplace. It gets better without treatment, by taking a walk after regular intervals. His Google search had triggered stress and he refused to believe me. He even went to another specialist, got an MRI done and came back to me.He was perfectly fine,’ Dr Hulse said.
He mentioned another case of a 30 year-old techie who had slight pain in her heels every morning when she woke up. ‘She had plantar fasciitis, a condition that results in pain in the heel and bottom of the foot when a person puts the first step down after waking up in the morning. By walking for a while, it gets better with blood circulation in the body and it is self-limiting. The patient had gone to a neurologist first and was not convinced when told she had no problem. She began to assume she had diabetic neuropathy of the foot,’ Dr Hulse said
