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Google it Right!

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If you are one of those who resort to Google for your health problems, you are not the only one.
Almost anyone who has access to the Internet does it nowadays, either to find out what their symptoms suggest, discover remedies and side effects, learn about “illnesses”, hunt for the right doctor or hospital, and sometimes to track if the treatment is going right.
Many doctors are still outraged by the cheekiness of patients trying to cross-check or “spy” on their “wisdom” reflecting a bygone attitude of “paternalistic” medicine.
I consider “Google” a useful repository of information, and the inevitable new factor in patient-doctor relationship, and am OK with it, as long as, ….and that is important, as long as my patients Google it right!
1. Look carefully at the source of information. What shows up immediately as soon as you type the search words and click the return button are usually advertisements and “promotional” sites.
2. Most reliable ones would have .edu or .net or .org after them, suggesting that these belong to educational or other reliable organizations. The ones with .com are usually commercial and are likely to be biased.
3. If you wish to Google symptoms, such as “constipation” it is fine. Most reliable sites will provide a large amount of information about its causes and management. When you go down the list, you will however realize that one of the rare causes is cancer of the colon.
4. If however you put two search terms such as “constipation” and a diagnostic term such as “colon cancer”, most of what will appear on the screen will seem to convey that you might have developed the bad disease.
5. Putting the information in a proper perspective is the most important bit. For example, if a young person has been suffering from “constipation” for several years, it is almost invariably going to be due to faulty eating (less amount of dietary fiber, consumption of constipating medicines or food items) or sluggish movement of the colon.
If however the same symptom occurs for the first time in an elderly person, is associated with rectal bleeding and loss of weight, the chances of the cause being colon cancer goes up. This is what the doctor does for you.
6. Don’t form your opinions based on what you see on social media. These are usually individual opinions or promotional in nature. If one aggrieved relative shrieks about the tragic death of his father from cardiac arrest after a surgery for colon cancer, it should not make us change our decisions in another patient, just as we would not stop driving on the road because of one reported accident.
7. The conditions and outcomes posted in social media are often the worst as good happy outcomes are rarely reported.
8. Do not hesitate to discuss what you have found on the net with your doctor. He will probably help you to navigate through the difficult paths that of a balanced clinical decision-making.

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