Hypothyroidism: Is It Possible or Probable? Part 2

Let's pick up where we left off last time. We were looking at how a doctor decides to make a diagnosis of hypothyroidism by gathering information from research articles. This happens despite the fact that doctors are not very qualified to analyze the quality of the study from which they are gathering the information. Just as many people take a blind leap of faith in their doctor, your doctor is a taking a blind leap of faith in the research team that performed and published the study.

So how can you feel comfortable that a doctor can make a diagnosis with a high confidence of probability? By following some very fundamental rules of making a diagnosis:

1. The human body is a closed, contiguous system. Everything has some effect on everything else. Though an easier route to take, you should not look at individual parts of the whole (concentrating on a "problem thyroid gland" instead of looking at how the thyroid gland is affected by other parts, as well it affects other parts).
2. A single physical exam finding, lab test, symptom, etc. means nothing on its own. Gathering all the pertinent information will develop a better picture of what is truly going on in the person (making a diagnosis on a low TSH without correlating it with other findings is diagnosing from possibility, not probability).
3. Most people don't follow the textbook. Doctor's study disease processes (pathology) and are looking for a certain presentation that a person with a certain disease "should" have. This is rarely the case. Most people have only portions of what they "should" have according to their diagnosis, along with some extra findings that don't exactly fit the mold.

If your doctor always keeps these things in mind, s/he will turn over more rocks to uncover significant findings, relate it back to the entire person and piece them together to come up with the answer to the most important question of them all..."So what's your story?"

Once your doctor knows "your story," they can make their diagnosis from a standpoint of probabilities.

One final note: I said last post that I was going to making things more clear, while I kind of rambled on without giving an example. I promise to be behave and make it all a little more simple in Part 3.

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