Oxford Handbook of Clincal Diagnosis


This book explains how to use a history, examination, and preliminary tests to arrive at a diagnosis. This helps us as clinicians to anticipate what may happen next and how interventions may influence the disease process. We are also better equipped to share with our patients and colleagues what we are thinking and doing.
The approach used here enables clinicians to focus on symptoms, physical signs, and initial test results that are likely to lead to a diagnosis. This is based on the principle that diagnostic leads with short differential diagnoses will be more informative than those features with long lists of causes.
Each sign or symptom on a page is followed by a list of diagnoses with associated suggestive and confirmatory clinical and laboratory features. The reader may scan down the page to see which entries are compatible with the patient’s findings thus far. The compatible findings can then be used as evidence for the diagnosis.
In the spirit of the Oxford American Handbooks, readers are encour- aged to be critical about the contents of the book, to make changes, and to let us know of any significant differences in opinion or errors. 

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