Many ‘cyberchondriacs’ misdiagnose themselves via Google, say Oz docs

MELBOURNE - Australian doctors have warned that they are coming across various ‘cyberchondriacs’-patients who misdiagnose their illnesses after Googling their symptoms.

The Australian Medical Association is concerned that the ample of online medical information is proving to be more harmful than worthy as patients increasingly refer to the Internet for advice before consulting a trained doctor.

“You can’t make a diagnosis using the Internet,” News.com.au quoted Steve Hambleton of AMA as saying.

“Patients turn up with sheets of paper convinced they have a particular problem. Doctors have to explain why patients haven’t got something - before explaining what they have got. It certainly increases stress for the patient.

“Medical practitioners go through a minimum of 10 years of training before they can practise independently. You can’t match that with an internet search engine,” he said.

Over the past 12 months most health-related Google searches in Australia were for information related to ’symptoms’, ‘blood’ and ‘cancer’.

Also, there has been twofold increase the in the number of online queries about ‘hemorrhoids (sic)’ and ‘thyroid symptoms’ since 2009.

Google’s user experience researcher, Dan Russell, said the onus to assess the accuracy and credibility of online information was on the individual.

“We now as individuals have access to huge amounts of information and you can pull up thousands and thousands of pages about Alzheimer’s or irritable bowel syndrome.

“The irony is that people once learned how to look at the page of a book, document or journal and understand roughly how believable it was… but now for basically no money any wacko can write anything and put it on the web,” said Russell.

“As an individual at home looking at all this stuff, you have to constantly ask, ‘Can I believe this?’” he added. (ANI)