Every Patient Tells a Story: Medical Mysteries and the Art of Diagnosis

In Every Patient Tells a Story, Dr Lisa Sanders takes a closer look at the process of solving diagnostic dilemmas, providing a first-hand account of the knowledge and intuition that leads a doctor to make the right diagnosis. Never in the history of mankind have doctors had the knowledge, tools and skills they have today to diagnose disease. And yet mistakes are made, diagnoses missed, symptoms or tests misunderstood. In this high-tech world of modern medicine, Sanders shows that knowledge, while essential, is not enough to unravel the complexities of disease. He presents an unflinching look at the detective story that characterises almost every disease-diagnosis, revealing the combination of uncertainty and intrigue that doctors face when confronting sick or dying patients. Through dramatic stories of patients with baffling symptoms, Sanders depicts the absolute necessity and baffling difficulty of obtaining a patient's history, the challenges of physical examination, the pitfalls of doctor-doctor communication, the vagaries of testing and the near catastrophic consequences of diagnostic errors.