Translations:Medical diagnosis/8/en

The initial task is to detect a medical indication to perform a diagnostic procedure. Indications include:

• Detection of any deviation from what is known to be normal, such as can be described in terms of, for example, anatomy (the structure of the human body), physiology (how the body works), pathology (what can go wrong with the anatomy and physiology), psychology (thought and behavior) and human homeostasis (regarding mechanisms to keep body systems in balance). Knowledge of what is normal and measuring of the patient's current condition against those norms can assist in determining the patient's particular departure from homeostasis and the degree of departure, which in turn can assist in quantifying the indication for further diagnostic processing.
• A complaint expressed by a patient.
• The fact that a patient has sought a diagnostician can itself be an indication to perform a diagnostic procedure. For example, in a doctor's visit, the physician may already start performing a diagnostic procedure by watching the gait of the patient from the waiting room to the doctor's office even before she or he has started to present any complaints.