Paris - Doctors treating a patient with unusual symptoms can use Google to try to pinpoint the cause, a study published this week by the British Medical Journal (BMJ) has suggested.
Australian doctors were given 26 real-life cases of individuals who had fallen sick with relatively rare disorders. They were not told what diagnoses had been made in these case reports, but did a Google search based on the symptoms that were presented.
Google returned the right diagnosis in 15 of the 26 cases - an accuracy rate of 58 percent.
"As internet access becomes more readily available in outpatient clinics and hospital wards, the web is becoming an important clinical tool for doctors," the paper says.
The authors add a caveat, however: the results from Google are only as good as the knowledge base of the searcher - a caution that especially applies to patients who try to self-diagnose their problems. - Sapa-AFP