Dr. Drljević: People in BiH increasingly seeking diagnoses on the internet, which is wrong and dangerous

People must stop googling illnesses on the internet! Not only will it not bring them any benefit, but it can seriously complicate their health problems. The problem of „Cyberchondria“ in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as doctors call the obsession of patients with suffering from everything they read on internet search engines, was warned about by prim. dr. Harun Drljević, president of the Medical Chamber of the Federation of BiH, in an interview for the Bosnian news agency Patria.

This problem, warns Dr. Drljević, appeared earlier in the world, and since two years ago it has begun to heavily burden doctors in our country as well. Before coming to the hospital, patients seek diagnoses on internet search engines. This, warns the president of the Federal Medical Chamber, not only most often leads them in the wrong direction, but also represents a serious problem for doctors, whose advice patients no longer listen to and who cannot achieve the full effect of treatment.

- The autonomy of doctors in their work is being lost – says Dr. Drljević.

- People have become „too smart“. What doctors learn over months and years, patients try to solve in two minutes. This is a serious problem that undermines the treatment of the patient themselves. People interpret diagnostic and therapeutic procedures in a completely distorted way, which can endanger their lives – warns Dr. Drljević.

Research conducted by the company “Microsoft” showed that after self-diagnosing, people indeed feel sick. As many as one in seven Europeans seek a diagnosis on the internet, and this number has increased in recent years, as the number of internet users has also increased.

If you type the term „sore throat“ into an internet search engine, about fifteen different diagnoses will appear, from a throat infection to even cancer of the lymph nodes, which can cause total confusion in the mind of the person with the problem, writes Patria.