Doctor Google Danger Alert

Dr Google is leading us up the garden path, GPs warn.

Doctors are warning of catastrophic consequences after new research revealed four in five Australians are turning to the web for health information and nearly half of those are using Dr Google to make a self-diagnosis.

Leading GPs say people are presenting to the doctor with fears of major health issues when the real problem is minor, while others put off going to their GP because they believe their issue is not serious.

An international survey conducted by health insurance provider Bupa also found that of the 80 per cent of Australians who use the net to research health issues, 70 per cent also seek out information about medicines.

The survey covered over 12,000 people around the world, including 1000 Australians. Globally, 68 per cent of respondents used the net to look for information about a medicine and 47 per cent to make a self-diagnosis.

Dr Brian Morton, former president of the Australian Medical Association (AMA) in NSW and chairman of the Council of General Practice, said he was seeing a man today who had presented with symptoms of temporal arteritis - inflammation and damage to blood vessels that supply the head area.

The condition must be managed urgently and can lead to "catastrophic blindness", Morton said. However the 70-year-old man's son had Googled the symptoms - body aches and jaw pain when chewing - which led him to suspect they were actually side effects of Lipitor, a popular medication for reducing cholesterol.

"He thought all he needed to do was to stop his cholesterol lowering medication," said Morton.

Further, the man also used a search engine to research the medicine Morton prescribed him for temporal arteritis and second-guessed the treatment.

"So there is potential for Dr Google and well-meaning family members to cause catastrophe." Morton said.

He said he also regularly came across elderly people who were ordering questionable erectile dysfunction remedies from the internet. Another major online medication trend was people buying "natural remedies", with no guarantee that the product was effective or "the real McCoy".

"It's tagged as food stuffs or not as medication so it gets around regulation and secondly it's labelled as natural and people say if it's natural it can help me, just like eating a piece of fruit or something," he said.

Dr Steve Hambleton, federal vice-president of the AMA, said the "information explosion" on the internet had spawned many great sources of medical advice but also copious amounts of bad information.

"The 50 per cent who are trying to self-diagnose is really disturbing, because that's the hard part, that is where you need someone with very broad experience who can look at all the parameters at the same time and try and come to a view as to where we should go," he said.

"That's why GPs aren't allowed to practice independently until they've had 10 years of training."

He gave as an example a headache, which is a symptom of a brain tumour. However, the vast majority of people with headaches do not have brain tumours.

"You'll spend half the consultation convincing them they haven't got something and then the other half trying to figure out what they do have," said Hambleton.

Bupa's survey identified other examples. Pins and needles, depending on the website you look at, could be a vitamin B12 deficiency, sciatica or multiple sclerosis. Stomach cramps could be indigestion, appendicitis or heart disease, while an earache could be the result of a common cold, ear infection or brain abscess.

"You may actually be convinced you've got something you really don't have," said Hambleton.

Hambleton said people should only use the internet to research conditions a doctor has told them they have, rather than trying to put together a diagnosis based on multiple symptoms.

He said university websites, medical journals, government health websites and the sites of organisations specialising in specific diseases, like Diabetes Australia, were the most reliable online sources of medical information.

[Source : sydney morning herald]