When Your Patient’s Symptoms do not Fit with
Common Neurological Conditions, Consider Rare
Diagnoses in the Differential Diagnosis

Patricia Abbott

Opinion

When Your Patient’s Symptoms do not Fit with Common Neurological Conditions, Consider Rare Diagnoses in the Differential Diagnosis

Patricia Abbott*

Department of Nursing, University of Colorado, USA

Corresponding Author

Received Date: November 21, 2019; Published Date: December 04, 2019

Abstract

An adage all health care providers learn is “When you hear hoofbeats look for horses not zebras.” This is an appropriate way to approach patient care but can limit consideration of differential diagnoses. When patients present to a health care provider, the provider gets a history of the present concern and that helps to guide the exam. From this information a differential diagnosis list is determined to determine the most likely diagnosis. In that process of ruling in and ruling out the differentials, if symptoms do not fit, consider if a rare diagnosis could be a possibility.

Article Details

Citation

Patricia Abbott. When Your Patient’s Symptoms do not Fit with Common Neurological Conditions, Consider Rare Diagnoses in the Differential Diagnosis. Arch Neurol & Neurosci. 5(5): 2019. ANN.MS.ID.000622.