Augenblickdiagnose

The process of making a diagnosis is integral to the practice of medicine, but diagnostic reasoning is rarely taught as a specific point. in most inst ances, experienced clinicians use a method of generating and testing hypoth eses, finally selecting the hypothesis that best explains the clinical pict ure. Occasionally, especially distinctive physical signs allow augenblickdi agnose, a term that means "diagnosis in the blink of an eye." The process i s too rapid to have followed a hypothesis testing method. Similarly, key fr agments of history often permit very rapid diagnosis. The ability to make a snap diagnosis based on characteristic physical signs or snippets of clini cal information relies on familiarity with certain critical clinical inform ation. The reader is invited to try to augenblickdiagnose several cases.