How safe and successful is online self-diagnosis?
By Dan Roberts Last Updated: 8:17AM GMT 16 Mar 2009 We now shop, network, fact-find and even seek soulmates online. So it’s little surprise that, at the first mysterious twinge in the chest or shortness of breath, we self-diagnose by Googling our symptoms. A 2008 study by Microsoft in the US found that roughly two per cent of all web queries were health-related, and a quarter of the participants engaged in at least one medical search during the study. It also concluded that self-diagnosis by search engine leads surfers to fear the worst. The darkest fears of these “cyberchondriacs” were confirmed by the results, with searches for “headache” resulting in just as many results for brain tumours as benign causes such as caffeine withdrawal. Doctors are, understandably, deeply sceptical about online self-diagnosis. But for every patient mistaking indigestion for cardiac arrest, there’s someone with a genuine condition that might otherwise be missed. Denzil Searle, 38, falls firmly into the
