History and clinical examination, traditionally, have been labelled as the back bone for making a diagnosis. However, the increasing dependence on readily available investigative modalities (laboratory and imaging technology) combined with a fast pace of restricting one's practice to the focused areas are probably (subconsciously) leaving the physical examination undervalued and perhaps redundant.
Dear Ravi
The clinical examination is essential in the care of a patient. Only after a good clinical examination is possible to know what kind of additional tests can and should be requested. There medicine do not exist without a good clinical examination .
If the clinical examination is not done, there is no need of doctor and in this case it is better to consult the doctor Google
I would like to add, that fortunately clinical examination is now beeing scientifically evaluated. Ongoing studies and systematic reviews concerning the reliability and validity will be helpful in showing the value of a good examination. Furthermore, also laboratory and imaging tests have their lack of validity/reliability, as research shows.
Clinical examination is the most important step in diagnostics and treatment of patients. The contact with the patient creats the relations of confidence which is the fundament of medical ethics and medical practice. No machinery can substitute the value of conversation, palppation, percussion or auscultation. The patient needs the encouraging words of the doctor and nurses. Any other approach is wrong. Any other method of investigation is a second step in this process.
Hello Ravi Gupta
You make an interesting point. My friends in Radiology issue a lot of reports with a degree of uncertainty and suggest "clinical correlation is required" or something like that. The opinions they say to me is that the referring doctor(s) need to do a proper history and examination - which they increasingly ignore because of the idea that the imaging and laboratory technology is now so good. This would add to the comments of Panayot Tanchev .
Interesting point that is made by Christian Kopkow . I, personally, have found that a lot of so-called "old fashioned" ECG findings have poor sensitivity/specificity compared to echo and/or CT...
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