In the process of seeing a patient, the doctor should collect the patient's symptoms and signs, and provide information for the doctor to analyze and diagnose the patient's disease. Many families don't know much about what signs and symptoms are, so we're going to address that today.
First, what are symptoms?Symptoms are abnormalities or discomforts that the patient subjectively feels, such as nausea, abdominal pain, dyspnea, headache, arthralgia, fever, etc. Since it is the subjective feeling of the patient, if the patient does not say it, then the doctor has no way to know, for example, the patient has a headache, if the patient does not say that he has a headache, then no one knows that he has a headache. And there is generally no way to objectively quantify symptoms, because each person's sensitivity and tolerance to abnormal discomfort are different, for example, if we hit different people with the same force, then no one feels the same degree of pain.
Second, what are the signs?Signs are objective signs of abnormality that health care workers detect through physical examinations, such as sight, touch, percussion, and smell, and with the help of simple tools such as stethoscopes, flashlights, and percussion hammers. Here the protagonist is the health care worker, who has objective abnormalities found through a physical examination. Since it exists objectively, there is no way for the patient to hide it, for example, the doctor detects that the patient has splenomegaly through palpation, and the patient has a heart murmur with a stethoscope. And most of the signs can be quantified, such as heart murmurs, which can be divided into 6 grades according to the intensity of the murmur. According to the degree of splenomegaly, it is divided into three grades: mild, moderately enlarged, and highly enlarged.
Okay, so let's conclude that symptoms are subjective feelings that patients can hide and often go unquantified. Signs are abnormal objective signs that health care workers find during a physical examination. Patients have no way to hide and signs can be quantified. Well, I hope today's content is helpful to everyone.