Diagnosis is the identification of the nature and cause of anything. Diagnosis is used in many different disciplines with variations in the use of logics, analytics, and experience to determine the cause and effect relationships. In systems engineering and computer science, diagnosis is typically used to determine the causes of symptoms, mitigations for problems, and solutions to issues

 

Typically, a person with abnormal symptoms will consult a health care provider such as a physician, podiatrist, nurse practitioner, physical therapist or physician assistant, who will then obtain a medical history of the patient’s illness and perform a physical examination for signs of disease. The provider will formulate a hypothesis of likely diagnoses and in many cases will obtain further testing to confirm or clarify the diagnosis before providing treatment.

 

Medical tests commonly performed are measuring blood pressure, checking the pulse rate, listening to the heart with a stethoscope, urine tests, fecal tests, saliva tests, blood tests, medical imaging, electrocardiogram, hydrogen breath test and occasionally biopsy.

 

For instance, a common disorder such as pneumonia was nevertheless used as a diagnosis before the germ theory was accepted, and the disease was defined as a complex of many symptoms consisting of cough, sputum production, fever and chills. Later, as the actual cause was assigned to micro-organisms, the term diagnosis included the causality, e.g., pneumococcal pneumonia, suggesting not only a spectrum of symptoms but also a cause for the symptoms.

 

Advances in medicine could be described as a shift from definition #1 to definition #2 as scientific causalities were discovered. This differentiation of the term diagnosis is critically important because widespread disagreement exists between medical and psychiatric practitioners as to whether causalities for various diseases and disorders are known or not.[citation needed] If causalities are assumed to be known, then authentic cures can be obtained by correcting the causal abnormalities. If causalities are assumed to be unknown, then palliative treatments to reduce symptoms are the best treatments possible.

 

The diagnostic process is fluid in which the provider gathers information from the patient and others, from a physical examination of the patient, and from medical tests performed upon the patient.

 

There are a number of techniques used by providers to obtain a correct diagnosis:

 

Exhaustive method

Every possible question is asked and all possible data is collected.

Algorithmic method

The provider follows the steps of a proven strategy.

Pattern-recognition method

The provider uses experience to recognize a pattern of clinical characteristics.

Differential diagnosis

The provider uses the hypothetic-deductive method, a systematic, problem-focused method of inquiry.

 

The advanced clinician uses a combination of the pattern-recognition and hypothetic-deductive approaches

 

A diagnostic test is any kind of medical test performed to aid in the diagnosis or detection of disease. The possible benefits of a diagnostic test must be weighed against the costs of unnecessary tests and resulting unnecessary follow-up and possibly even unnecessary treatment of incidental findings

 

Diagnostic tests can have psychological effects on the patient that increase or reduce the symptoms.

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