Abstract
This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. Making a diagnosis is a complex process involving incomplete yet dynamic information. At no other time in the history of medicine has information been so readily available and accessible resulting in a greater need for clarity of thinking. A clear understanding of the underlying reasoning processes involved is necessary so as to avoid misdiagnosis and to avoid unnecessary often costly and time-consuming tests. This article explores the main reasoning processes inherent in the making of a diagnosis - deduction, induction and abduction.
Highlights
With all the medical tests and equipment available in our increasingly technological age, the inexperienced might be forgiven in thinking that making a clinical diagnosis is as simple as shaking the proverbial medical caduceus and ordering the appropriate medical test or procedure
It differs from the other reasoning processes - whereas deductive reasoning deals with certainty and inductive reasoning with probability based on data, abductive reasoning entails a best guess approach based on a limited set of information
Deductive reasoning is used to determine what tests need to be conducted to explore the consequences of hypotheses (Eriksson and Lindström, 1997)
Summary
With all the medical tests and equipment available in our increasingly technological age, the inexperienced might be forgiven in thinking that making a clinical diagnosis is as simple as shaking the proverbial medical caduceus and ordering the appropriate medical test or procedure. A familiar use of deductive logic in everyday thinking is shown in Illustration 1 Central to this reasoning process is a general rule relating a cause to an effect. Inductive reasoning uses specific examples to draw general conclusions Abductive reasoning typically begins with an incomplete set of observations and proceeds to the likeliest possible explanation – it infers the precondition "a" from the consequence "b" It differs from the other reasoning processes - whereas deductive reasoning deals with certainty and inductive reasoning with probability based on data, abductive reasoning entails a best guess approach based on a limited set of information. The doctors hypothesized possible causes of pain and SOB as pancreatitis, pneumonia, pulmonary embolism, myocardial infarction (heart attack) They tested these theories individually using deductive logic. A literature search revealed that there were only six such published cases in the world contributing to the body of medical knowledge of rare complications of sarcoidosis
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