I thoroughly enjoyed Rosie's presentation on somatization last week. I had heard of the concept before, just never knew the medical term to describe such an interesting phenomenon. I'm sure everyone has experienced this sensation at some point in their lives...after all, we are all grad students and stress is no stranger to us! To my understanding, there is no clinical way to diagnose a patient with somatization. It seems to be a last resort diagnosis when all other tests come back negative. This can be quite a problem when physicians are short of time, and cannot find an answer. However, many patients who indeed have serious complications that perhaps, have not physically manifested themselves, get overlooked in this loose screening process.
I don't deny that many patients do indeed experience somatization. And if that is the case, the treatment can be relatively easy compared to severe acute and chronic diseases, depending on one's resources. But in order to prevent misdiagnosing patients who have serious underlying illnesses, physicians must run a quality assessment and really listen to patients' concerns. From a patient's perspective, one must be clear and accurate when explaining symptoms and health behaviors. An intuition is also a very strong feeling. If a patient inherently knows something is wrong, he should get a second opinion regarding a possible premature somatization diagnosis.
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hey cori, i think you make a really good point. acknowledging somatization could have the unintended effect of convincing patients that there's nothing wrong, when perhaps there really is. medicine is far from 100% accurate: dr. calderon cites "medical errors" as #4 on the list of top global killers.
Yes Cori I didn't know much about somatization either. I think Physicians should run as many test as possible and try to give their patients comforting feelings. As Farah has mentioned we are far from 100% accuracy in medicine.. In the National Academics News has declared that “Medication Errors Injure 1.5 Million People and Cost Billions of Dollars Annually.” I really hope that in the near future we will not have to deal with many errors as we have been facing in the past. This number need to decrease!
Also the problem is doctors and patients don't believe that mental stress and emotions can manifest themselves physically in the body and cause aches and pain, including back pain. If more patients were empowered and educated on the notion that unresolved emotions and stress can store themselves in the body as tension knots, more people would be interested in stress alleviation measures such as yoga, meditation,and acupuncture/pressure.
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