How to Diagnose Diseases Using Symptoms

Diseases can manifest themselves in a variety of symptoms that can often provide clues as to what the disease is. Though the symptoms of a disease can vary from person to person, it's usually these symptoms that health care providers use to start getting an idea of what the disease may be. In many cases a disease can be approximately diagnosed from the symptoms. However, definitive diagnoses require medical tests.

Things You'll Need

• Medical reference books

Instructions

1. Identify the primary symptom. The primary symptom is often pain. Get as much information about the primary symptom as possible--such as the location, severity and a general description of the symptom. For example, if the primary symptom is pain, you need to know if it's a burning or an aching pain. For coughs, is the cough wet or dry?

2. Identify secondary symptoms. The secondary symptoms aren't the most prominent symptoms, but are other complaints that the patient may have and can yield clues as to the underlying disease.

3. Identify the timeline. Find out when the symptoms started and whether they got better or worse over time. Some diseases have a characteristic timeline for their symptoms.

4. Discover things that worsen symptoms. If the primary symptom is pain, finding out what makes the pain worse--be it a certain kind of movement or a position--can help identify the disease.

5. Find out what makes the symptoms better. If some medications (or ice, or rest) alleviate the symptoms, this can help with diagnosing the disease.

6. Match up symptoms with diseases. The primary symptoms should be your focus, but you should use the other symptoms to narrow your list of diseases. In general, based on the symptoms you will have a few possible diseases to look at, but this will give you an idea of what other tests to do.