David Kerr: Signals from the crowd—making a diagnosis
8 May, 13 | by BMJ Group
For very many years making a medical diagnosis was based loosely on the application of the principle of Occam’s Razor otherwise known as diagnostic parsimony—look for the fewest possible causes to explain a patient’s symptoms. However, with the increase in longevity of the background population, Occam’s Razor was eventually superseded by the Hickam’s Dictum which states that “patients can have as many diseases as they damn well please.” Here the idea is to consider that multiple symptoms are more likely explained by a collection of common diseases rather than a single rare one. more…
