Originally Posted by jayeff

And what started out as a drug company attitude seems to have spread to doctors themselves. More and more seem to pay minimal attention to accurate diagnosis, but rather identify the problem area and then start prescribing drugs. If the symptoms respond, they assume correct diagnosis, otherwise they try other treatments.

One serious flaw with this approach is that sometimes their drugs do impact on the symptoms, so they assume correct diagnosis. If the effect is minor, they try other drugs in the same family or change the dose, rather than continue to investigate. That has led to one member of my family being treated for "growing pains" and a brain tumor was eventually found to be the culprit. Another had neck and back pains diagnosed as stress, when she actually had a spinal problem. In both cases it was years before the real problems were discovered, by which time of course they were much worse.

And perhaps I am looking at the past through rose-tinted glasses, but it seems to me that when I was younger, doctors were much more able to make diagnoses without batteries of expensive tests. Then we entered the age of test, test, test, the insurance company will pay, so perhaps diagnostic skills became less important. Now doctors are under pressure to limit the tests they do, but lack the ability of their predecessors to diagnose without them. Maybe that is another reason that drugs have become diagnostic tools.