Correspondence
Case Records
N Engl J Med 2003; 349:912August 28, 2003
- Article
To the Editor:
The new editor of the Case Records of the Massachusetts General Hospital, Nancy Lee Harris, rightly notes in her editorial (May 29 issue)1 that at the turn of the 21st century, there is much less need than in previous decades for exercises in differential diagnosis. She is on target about patients in the hospital, but many elderly clinicians may contend that listening to patients remains the best way to learn about what troubles them and to decide which of the many abnormalities displayed on their images need to be corrected and which can be left alone. It grows even more difficult, with the triumphs and ease of medical imaging, to convince today's medical students that physicians can be the mediators between patients and their images and that “the eye is for accuracy, but the ear is for truth.”
1 ReferencesHoward M. Spiro, M.D.
Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06520
howard.spiro@yale. edu 1
Harris NL . Case Records of the Massachusetts General Hospital -- continuing to learn from the patient. N Engl J Med 2003;348:2252-2254
Full Text | Web of Science | Medline
Author/Editor Response
Dr. Spiro's point about the importance of listening to the patient is an excellent one that supports my proposal, as explained in the penultimate paragraph of my editorial, to include in the Case Records “examples of . . . cases in which physical findings and clinical judgment outweigh any laboratory test or imaging study in determining the diagnosis, treatment, and outcome.”
Nancy Lee Harris, M.D.
