According to certain conditions and internal sensations of the human body, one or another disease is judged. For thousands of years, scientists have studied what symptoms are. Each new observation was recorded by doctors, treatment instructions were drawn up, conclusions about which were drawn based on the analysis of the general picture of the patient's condition.
Totality of symptoms
When describing any disease, the question inevitably arises of what are the symptoms. Each inflammation in the body is accompanied by external signs, which are considered to be deviations from a healthy state. These include cough, redness of the skin, indigestion and others.
When considering the question "What are the symptoms?", It is recommended not to confuse individual conditions of the body with health problems. So, a change in skin color from sunlight is not a symptom if there is no redness or pain. Tanning is a completely natural process. But a burn from excessive sunbathing is already a pathology, accompanied by characteristic signs.
The symptoms are described in the following synonyms: symptom, change in the state of the human body, periodic ailments. A symptom can be a manifestation of external, internal, intangible by other people. Pain can only be described by the patient himself, the doctor can only believe and conduct a series of additional studies.
Feeling well
Symptoms are certain conditions of a person recorded in a description of preexisting diseases. Ailments in medical practice are manifestations of one type of pathogen. It can be a mosquito bite or a heavier virus. Doctors place the greatest emphasis on the patient’s well-being, which is determined by a number of issues and manipulations with his body.
Symptoms are common signs of inflammation. A person himself is able to notice by his condition that there has been a deterioration in health and accept the conclusion about the need to visit the clinic. There are practically no unexplored signs of diseases; mutation of microorganisms contributes to the emergence of new conditions that can only be diagnosed by an experienced medical professional.
Being treated according to the schemes of previous decades can already be extremely dangerous. Recently, more and more mixed diseases have been observed: virus-bacterial, parasitic-viral, the effect of several types of viruses, and many others.
The so-called mixed infections are dangerous for their confused manifestations. The early symptoms of a disease are easily confused with a simple and non-dangerous ailment. But after a couple of days, attacks or other manifestations of the disease suddenly arise, which are very difficult to tolerate. Procrastination with medical care may result in disability.
Classification
Symptoms have a medical classification, depending on the availability of information about them:
- Idiopathic - when the cause of the symptom is not established and there is no way to identify the disease. This group is also called essential symptoms. By the presence of a symptom, the disease is classified as independent (for example: idiopathic headache).
- Syndrome - signs of a deterioration in well-being available in a medical base. It is described as a combination of known and very common symptoms. The conditions for making a diagnosis are a comparison of a set of conditions of the patient’s body with a medical reference book and a survey assessing overall well-being.
Examples of syndromes:
- Flu-like - includes headache, fever, decreased performance, weakness, and “bone aches”.
- Depressive Syndrome - includes a set of psychological abnormalities.
Syndrome division:
- Nonspecific - observed during many painful conditions.
- Specific - observed only with a specific malaise, it is impossible to confuse.
The Importance of Studying Statistics
The causes and symptoms of diseases need to be analyzed in order to develop standard actions for the spread of viruses and infections of the same type. The training of medical specialists is carried out precisely thanks to the accumulated experience of previous generations. With a specific sign of the disease, treatment can be prescribed without additional tests. Proper diagnosis saves time and money, and also increases the chances of a cure.
It is important to start treating many diseases when the first signs appear. Symptoms help establish both the disease itself and the stage of its development, the degree of damage to parts of the body. Based on the totality of the signs of malaise, the only correct set of tests is prescribed and erroneous diagnoses are excluded.
Semiotics is a branch of medicine that studies methods for identifying symptoms and the possibility of premature diagnosis of the disease before taking tests. In the process of developing the doctrine, new classifications arose. The absence of a symptom also draws conclusions about the development of certain diseases. So, with a coma, the corneal reflex is not observed , when it is always present in a healthy person.
Consideration of additional conditions for diagnosis
To accurately determine this or that inflammation, symptoms and treatment (it gives results or not) are evaluated according to additional signs. Time is an important criterion for assessing the severity of malaise, its neglect. The duration of the judged on the quantitative characteristics of the effects on the body of infections, viruses.
Often you can independently determine the symptoms, and treat at home without a doctor's advice. So, a common cold in combination with a red throat gives reason to believe about a cold or the initial stage of development of a sore throat. But if these symptoms are present for more than 3 days, then a doctor’s consultation becomes necessary. It is protracted forms of malaise that are dangerous to human health.
An additional assessment is to check the quality of the observed symptom by quantitative criteria. For this, tests are given: sputum when coughing, urine with inflammation in the lower parts, blood with infections.
Quality research
To make the most accurate diagnosis, symptoms need to be specified according to certain criteria. So, when coughing, a search is made for the source of its origin, the depth and frequency of repetitions are measured. An important point is to mark whether it is dry or expectorated in sputum. The moment of its beginning is fixed in the ratio of the phase of respiration.
The whole process of searching for refinements of a symptom is called its specificity. This criterion describes conditions for a specific disease: asthma, flu, poisoning. The totality of the symptoms of a particular disease allows doctors to "move" in the right direction when examining a patient. However, according to medical rules, a final diagnosis is made only after confirmation of the assumptions by analyzes.
Symptom analysis is widely used in resuscitation, when the count is minutes, and sometimes clinical tests can not be carried out due to the long time to obtain results. The method of associations works here - comparing the existing picture with the base (from medical manuals and personal experience).
Psychological component
Objective symptoms cannot be disputed, they are obvious to others and the patient himself. These include: a rash on the body, blood, blue skin, a change in the composition of urine. In general, everything that can be seen or felt is taken into account.
Subjective symptoms are determined after communication with the patient. The testimony obtained is refracted by the human nervous system and the state of his psyche. The threshold of pain for all is different and the same state by two different people will be perceived in their own way. Therefore, during the diagnosis takes into account: gender, age, physical development of a person.
Nervous system
The human condition affects the work of the body as a whole. The psychological component can change a particular symptom. But there are false data from the malfunctioning of nerve endings. A person may complain of pain in the hand when there are no prerequisites for this.
Symptoms of disorders in the nervous system can be false and their manifestations cannot correctly diagnose other diseases. The task of doctors is to identify and eliminate the likelihood of error in difficult conditions. This is possible with neurosis or psychosomatic diseases.
Mixed diseases
From time to time, chronic diseases are inflamed in any person, which inevitably affect all parts of the body. During a period of loss of strength, immunity decreases, viruses, bacteria easily penetrate the internal organs. Mixed symptoms interfere with the correct diagnosis, but medicine has already accumulated quite a wealth of experience in determining the true causes of the problem.
Interdependent symptoms are known: mixed parasitic infections, infections by several types of viruses, tumor lesions of internal organs, combined with irritation of the nervous system. Such conditions are unique and rare. Often, for a private doctor, this situation becomes a surprise, and the patient becomes a victim of a systematic approach to mixed diseases.