Case of the Month
“The First Case” Scenario
In 2003, patients in China began to die of a mysterious lung infection, which was later named, SARS. As the outbreak progressed, a number of patients in Canada also developed severe pneumonia. Since all prior cases were limited to Asia, Canadian physicians had no way of knowing that SARS had reached North America.
In conjunction with the Surveillance and Response section of the World Heath Organization, GIDEON has developed a module designed to diagnose “first cases” of a disease which has never before appeared in a given country.
SARS is no longer diagnosed in Canada, or even in Asia. Using the new module, let’s enter the clinical features of SARS for a Canadian patient and see what GIDEON comes up with.
When we click on the Diagnosis button, two screens appear.
The first screen presents the differential diagnosis of diseases which currently cause these clinical findings in Canada.
And the second screen presents a list of diseases which are compatible with these findings, but are not currently reported in Canada. Note that the first disease listed is SARS !
