My husband just said (as he was reading another article on this off of Google Reader), "58% is at least as good as the doctor's are. How often have you had to go back over and over for the same thing, and they still can't get it right? Or have been stumped altogether and sent you away without any diagnosis?"

From my personal experience, "Internet medicine" rocks, but of course we still need our doctors. My favorite doctors are those I've met via the Internet , or those happy to work with the information gathered there.

Cara

P.S. Google is certainly helping people recognize celiac disease and B12 deficiency. I can see the search terms people are using when they 'hit' The Gluten File through a google search, and sometimes they are a list of obscure symptoms, or an abnormal test result ignored, etc.

58% starts to look pretty good COMPARED TO:

Recognizing celiac disease on the basis of the various manifestations of the disorder is difficult. In a study20 of 228 patients with adult-onset celiac disease, it was found that 42 were diagnosed at age 60 or later. Seven patients with dermatitis herpetiformis were excluded, leaving 35 patients in the analysis. Fifteen of the 35 patients had been seen--with unexplained symptoms and abnormal blood tests--for an average of 28 years by their family physicians or in hospital outpatient departments before the diagnosis of celiac disease was made.

A national survey35 of 1,937 members of the Canadian Celiac Association addressed the issue of previous missed diagnosis of celiac disease. Of 686 patients with biopsy-proven celiac disease, 299 (43 percent) had previously been given the following incomplete or missed diagnoses: anemia, 47; stress, 45; nervous condition, 41; irritable bowel syndrome, 34; gastric ulcer, 23; food allergy, 19; colitis, 13; menstrual problems, 13; edema, 9; gallstones, 9; diverticulitis, 6; dermatitis herpetiformis, 4 and other, 36.
From: Detecting Celiac Disease in Your Patients by Harold T. Pruessner, MD
PMID: 9518950 Mar 1998


Over a 7 1/2-year period, 39 patients were diagnosed, 49% within the last 18 months of the study period. Fourteen patients (39%) had been referred to the hospital a total of 30 times with features suggestive of celiac sprue, yet without being successfully diagnosed: the delay between initial referral and diagnosis was 6 years in nine of these patients
How many hospital visits does it take before celiac sprue is diagnosed? PMID: 8835894