Thursday, October 25, 2012

Reasons Why People Have Difficulties Identifying Symptoms With Hepatitis C

By Sylvia Andertson


Doctors often find it difficult to diagnose hepatitis C. What makes this condition's diagnosis hard is mainly the fact that clinicians often have difficulties linking hepatitis C symptoms to the condition. Diagnosis can be made with the use of certain lab tests that would have to be performed. But for the clinician to order these lab tests, he or she needs to have already suspected the condition. Thus, it would be very helpful if there are symptoms that directly point to the condition in order for him to suspect the possibilities of hepatitis C. In order for the lab tests to be ordered, there should be a valid suspicion that will be backed by symptoms that can be directly linked to the condition.

Often, patients end up visiting many clinicians, before eventually being suspected to have the condition by one of the clinicians, who then orders the relevant tests to firmly diagnose the condition. But have you ever wondered why even doctors and clinicians have a hard time making the connection between hepatitis C symptoms and hepatitis C itself? Symptoms of hepatitis C are so many and so varied that identifying them as hepatitis C symptoms is not an easy task. Hepatitis C is not the type of medical condition that has its own set of fixed and identifiable symptoms. As a matter of fact, you can say that every hepatitis C case is unique and different from the others.

As with many conditions, the nature of hepatitis C is such that it is not mandatory for a patient to have all symptoms, in order for him or her to be diagnosed with the condition. Matters are made harder by the fact that given the huge number of symptoms through which hepatitis C can manifest, different patients tend to present with different permutations of the symptoms. If a clinician has encountered a patient that exhibits a certain permutation of symptoms in one day and then another patient with a different permutation right after, he would no doubt be confused and would not immediately realize that both are with hepatitis C.

The fact that most of the symptoms of hepatitis C also appear as symptoms of other medical conditions make it even harder for doctors to associate them with hepatitis C right off the bat. Often, a patient could be diagnosed with typhoid fever, tuberculosis, or even a case of malaria when, in fact, he is suffering from hepatitis C.

The third reason as to why it is so often hard to link hepatitis C symptoms with the condition is in the fact that the patients don't always give comprehensive information to their clinicians. Yet this is a condition which often has to be identified through a clinical process known as differential diagnosis, which requires a doctor to have 'the complete picture.' Unfortunately, there are some people who discount some things they are experiencing, thinking they are not symptoms but merely inconsequential events. Little do they know that these could lead their clinicians to arrive at the correct diagnosis.




About the Author:



No comments: