Cyberchondria

This is a serious issue that, as a health professional, I deal with frequently as patients come in to the clinic with many questions, often concerned about the serious complications they are facing.  A patient with back pain may come into the clinic well-versed about spine surgery, but not so aware of the fact that most back pain gets better on its own!    Microsoft has published a research paper on this issue that is extremely useful in understanding how and why cyberchondria happens.

The table I pulled from the article lists probabilities of certain conditions occurring during web searches.  If we stick with our headache example, a common benign condition, we see that we have a probability of seeing "brain tumor" 0.03 of the time.  In actuality, the probability of your headache being a brain tumor is more along the lines of 0.000116, or 1:10,000.

The bottom line is that web searches are weighted unequally toward serious conditions.  You are more likely to read about serious things than common things.  Web searches currently do not allow you to make judgments about the frequency or likelihood of a certain condition...pretty important parameters in making a diagnosis!  

Beware the web search next time your head is pounding, your dog has a fever, or your back is sore!!