Noida, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Saturday spoke about the growing tendency among people to turn to the internet and ChatGPT to diagnose their ailments, and, on a lighter note, narrated how patients in rural areas often describe symptoms to doctors in ways that can make diagnosis challenging.
Addressing the inauguration of a Mahajan Imaging and Labs facility here, Singh said people now often search their symptoms online before visiting a doctor. Singh said a person experiencing mild chest pain could search the symptom online and soon conclude that he was suffering from a “serious” heart disease, although such pain could also result from anxiety or muscle-related problems. He said patients sometimes reached doctors not merely with their symptoms but with the diagnosis they had arrived at through internet searches. “Instead of telling the doctor about the symptoms, the patient comes with his internet research and tells the doctor the name of the disease,” Singh said. Speaking on a lighter note, Singh said patients also sometimes described their problems to doctors in colloquial terms, particularly in rural areas. “In the entire medical education, the doctor has never heard or studied about a symptom called ‘dhuk dhuk’,” Singh said, explaining that patients could find it difficult to accurately express what they were experiencing. Singh also narrated another lighter moment involving a patient who had gone to a doctor after reading about his symptoms on the internet and said he believed he had “claustrophobia”. The doctor then suggested “MRI scan” to begin the treatment and the patient instantly agreed.
