Patients are coming upon huge volumes of information, all purported to be scientific, on symptoms, tests, diseases, medications, home remedies, and cures. As patients, we need to find ways to validate the information we are retrieving. We can do this by going to reliable sites that publish information based on scientific review. Sites that do this will explain the data, why it is valid, and in some cases, why it may not be valid. Sites such as the National Institutes of Health, many medical schools, and reputable medical journals critically analyze information submitted to them before publishing anything.
Few patients are able to assess their own symptoms and physical findings and make a diagnosis.
Physicians' ability to make a correct diagnosis is a skill honed over many years of seeing numerous patients. Patients need to assess whether the information they are reading really applies to their situation. The applicability to the individual patient is even more complex. The choice of which therapy to use for a given patient may require the consideration of 30 or 40 different aspects of the individual patient. As a patient, I am unlikely to know all of those factors.