You see your doctor regularly to be sure you are in best shape. You see your doctor when you feel something bizarre about your body, such as unusually painful cramps. You submit to physical tests and other procedures to make sure you’re doing well, or know as soon as possible the cause of any physical discomfort. And then, you ensure that you take your medications, but all to no avail because you still not relieved of the unknown ailment. Even if you get second and third opinions, you seem to get no satisfying explanation from doctors and the treatments you’ve undergone didn’t work as expected. Could it be that those doctors missed your real ailment?
The truth is there are medical conditions that are not easy to diagnose because symptoms are similar to yet other diseases. These symptoms create haze to the real ailment, giving doctors in those uniforms scrubs hard time telling what it is, and patients suffering from supposedly easily treatable maladies. Let’s take a look at some of the diseases that even skilled and experienced doctors often overlook.
1. Sleep Apnea – Usually considered by people as normal, this medical condition, which involves disordered breathing during sleep or heavy snoring, is linked with stroke and heart attack. Sleep apnea symptoms include fatigue, daytime sleepiness, poor concentration, slow reflexes. The condition is most common among adults, but has recently been increasing among children. Sleep apnea is a treatable disease through lifestyle changes, mouthpieces, breathing devices, and surgery.
Read more about sleep apnea treatments:
sleep apnea facts in nhlbi.nih
sleep apnea info in webmd
sleep apnea information in mayoclinic
2. Migraines – Doctors easily diagnose migraine on patients having symptoms like severe pain on one side of the head, sensitivity to light, diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting. With several types of migraines, symptoms also vary. Hemiplegic migraine, for instance, mimics symptoms of stroke. Significantly, upon seeing symptoms of more complicated and risky disease, doctors would often focus on the latter than look into other possible causes. Sometimes, the debilitating pain suffered by the patient is simply blamed on sinusitis or tension-type headache. Migraine is treatable through therapy and medications or medications only.
Read more about migraine treatments and medications:
migraine facts in medicinenet
migraine facts in mayoclinic
3. Glaucoma – This eye disease can occur to anyone, but symptoms are normally disregarded until they already bump unto something more frequently because they’ve lost peripheral vision. Such an ailment is hard to detect, though, causing many sufferers to lose their eyesight. Glaucoma is hard to detect through eye screenings and has no cure; comprehensive dilated eye exam is necessary in detecting the condition and treatments will only halt or slow its development. Medicines, eye drops, laser trabeculoplasty, and conventional surgery.
Read more about glaucoma facts, symptoms and treatments:
glaucoma info in ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
glaucoma facts in nei.nih.gov
4. Bipolar Disease – Tantrums in children and growing pain among teenagers come in the way of early detection of bipolar disease or manic depression. Instead of correctly giving the diagnosis, the doctor may see it as ADHD or ODD. Only until the patient becomes adult can the disorder be easily detected, with the help of physical examination, interview, and laboratory tests using fMRI or functional magnetic resonance imaging and PET or positron emission tomography. To help determine bipolar from other psychological problems among children, doctors will have to know if the behavioral disorder of the patient is episodic rather than chronic behaviors shown by ADHD and ODD sufferers. But the normal child behaviors bring challenge to determining bipolar disease, plus the fact that it could be difficult for them to describe their feelings. Bipolar disorder remains incurable, and is recurrent. Treatments, which include medication and psychotherapy, simply help them have better their symptoms.
Read more about bipolar facts:
bipolar facts in emedicinehealth
bipolar info in nimh.nih.gov
5. Childhood Asthma – Wheezing and shortness of breath are the common symptoms of childhood asthma, but children under the age of two wheeze due to other disorders such as RSV bronchitis or anatomically small airways. The latter normally goes away as a child grows and the airways develop. Other symptoms of asthma in children include frequent coughing spells, congestion, and pain or tightness in the chest. Some may also show restlessness, poor sleep, coughing after laughing, and inability to keep up with other children in physical activities. One treatment used for asthma is inhaled corticosteriods.
Read more about childhood asthma:
childhood asthma information in nhs.uk
childhood asthma info in nationalasthma.org.au
6. Lupus Erythematosus – When the patient exhibit tell-tale butterfly rash, doctors will easily know the person is suffering from lupus erythematosus, a long-term autoimmune disease that may affect brain, joints, kidneys, skin, and other organs. However, when the patient has roundish discoid lesions on the scalp or ear that is when the professionals in lab coats will have hard time. Physical exam and nervous system exam will have to be done to detect lupus, along with antibody tests, CBC, chest x-ray, kidney biopsy, and urinalysis. Lupus erythematosus is also an incurable disease with treatments that can only control symptoms. High dose of corticosteroids or cytotoxic drugs are used for treatment.
Read more about lupus erythematosus:
lupus erythematosus facts in ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
lupus erythematosu info in nlm.nih.gov
