Woman accused of faking symptoms of debilitating illness dies aged 33 ( www.independent.co.uk )

Aston sought medical help after her symptoms—which included severe migraines, abdominal pain, joint dislocations, easy bruising, iron deficiency, fainting, tachycardia, and multiple injuries—began in 2015, per the New Zealand Herald. She was referred to Auckland Hospital, where a doctor accused her of causing her own illness. Because of his accusations, Aston was placed on psychiatric watch. 

Research suggests women are often much more likely to be misdiagnosed than men. A 2009 study of patients with heart disease symptoms found 31.3 per cent of middle-aged women “received a mental health condition as the most certain diagnosis”, compared to just 15.6 per cent of their male counterparts. Additionally, a 2020 study found that as many as 75.2 per cent of patients with endometriosis—a painful disorder that affects the tissue of the uterus—had been misdiagnosed after they started experiencing endometriosis symptoms. Among those women, nearly 50 per cent were told they had a “mental health problem”.

DavidGarcia ,

I'm gonna cherish the day when all these doctors that suck at diagnosing are replaced with AI.
It's so stupid that you have to go to 100 doctors to find one that takes you seriously and actually gives you the right diagnosis.

pezhore ,
@pezhore@lemmy.ml avatar

Unfortunately, AI is only as good as it's training data. If there are biases in the training data, those biases shine through later.

AI is interesting but not a silver bullet.

Saraphim ,

My best friend might be dying because she’s a fat woman. For over 15 years I’ve watched doctors tell her that her problem is that she needs to lose weight, prescribe weight loss plans, send her to eating clinics, suggest surgery as a solution to her horrific periods that last for months, massive fibroids (I’m talking 12 x 6 inch clots here ladies), fainting, breathing trouble and chest pains, constant body and joint pain, anemia. The last five years she’s barely even been able to leave the house and blacks out walking to the bathroom and it still wasn’t an issue, and all her fault for being fat.

Turns out that iron deficiency was damaging her heart. Those clots were a symptom of another problem. The pain, the breathing issues, all of it would have existed whether she was fat or thin because she has fucking cancer that has likely metastasized to her lungs. No one checked, no one considered any other options until one er doctor was horrified to see her history of iron transfusions and hadn’t checked her heart health , which led to further testing of the non-fat-lady variety.

It’s bad guys. It’s a bad cancer, rare, and has had decades to grow, because she’s a dramatic, emotional, paranoid female who’s fat.

I guarantee any fat man in the world can walk into an ER with chest pains, and they’d check his heart, not put him on a diet.

reverendsteveii ,

I have a friend who was experiencing pain in her abdomen for weeks. 3 doctors in a row just told her she was fat and sent her home. When she finally got a doctor who was willing to practice medicine, it turned out she had an active infection on the verge of sepsis and undiagnosed PCOS that had developed into tumors on her ovaries. Had she not sought a fourth opinion, she would be dead and the doctors that bullied her out of their offices to make room for patients with "real problems" would face no sanction at all.

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