Respected members I am a primary care pediatrician from South India, with 31 years experience after my graduation and 26 yeas after MD. Primary care rests on three pillars. Equity,(not equality), community participation and intersectoral coordination. The last one landed me here.
Medicine is an ever changing science, and, when new evidence arises, we incorporate it into our daily practice. Classic example will be Vitamin D deficiency. The last decade has expanded the role of this vitamin in health and disease. Surprisingly, sunlight does not always provide the vitamin, contrary to our thinking in the last century. The prevalence of the deficiency ranges from 50 to 90%, depending upon the area chosen in India. Many countries recommend the vitamin from birth.
All along this vitamin D deficiency was present. It is only now that we can correctly diagnose it, and we have been, increasingly.
That means if the patient had a complaint that arose from vitamin D deficiency, 25 years back 2 things would have been done
- error of omission: the symptom would have been dismissed as trivial
- error of commission: some other treatment would have been given
Of course, there are several such examples over the past 100 years. this in no way to degrade my medical community or myself.
Is there a word or phrase which describes the following sequence:
- there is a medical condition
- the patient has symptoms
- the best medical practitioners of the time either ignore the condition or provide useless treatment, because of the state of medical knowledge
I would like a term that could be applied to currently unidentified problems.
Additional Information: Idiopathic is not the word .Idiopathic means, the doctor is sure of the disease but does not know the cause