“Tim Stauffer, the San Diego Padres right-hander… called up a medical website on his iPhone, entered his symptoms and came up with what could be appendicitis, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune,” ESPN reports. “Stauffer then called Padres head trainer Todd Hutcheson from his hotel room and described his findings.
ESPN reports, “Later that morning, Stauffer had his appendix removed laparoscopically without complications and was placed on the disabled list.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “elyman24” for the heads up.]
BFD. The Zune has a hemorrhoid app.
It checks for them as it passes by…
He did the appropriate thing in contacting someone else with his theory. God help those that use this capability inappropriately – when in doubt, see a physician.
…is there anything they can’t do?
….and if you DON’T have one
it will cure that!
And this is safe how? And he’s as MLB pitcher so he has access to world class physicians, so this is a stupid article. In the real world, those symptoms could be a differential diagnosis of may be 100 different pathophysiologies. And say you think you’ve got “stomach flu” but you have a cancer instead. Oh and it’s illegal for a website to provide a medical diagnosis without FDA approval. FDA contacted.
@LeftCoastDude
…which is why he contacted the head trainer to get a proper medical diagnosis. You fail for lack of reading comprehension.
I seriously doubt that the website “gave” a diagnosis. You’re probably overreacting to contact the FDA. The assertion that the site gave a diagnosis is unsubstantiated, particularly if there is a disclaimer on the site. I just checked WebMD and they have a specific disclaimer that refutes that they are giving a diagnosis. The site just allows you to winnow through various symptoms to find possible causes. With so little detail, we have no way of knowing what sequence of events occurred.
Is it safe? I imagine as safe as any of the millions of people who have one of those home medical encyclopedias at hand to diagnose their own ailments. He probably looked at a list of possible problems, and decided that most were non-threatening except the appendicitis and opted to visit a doctor immediately to either rule that possibility out or treat it if it was indeed appendicitis. Seems to me that he use a readily available web resource in an intelligent manner with positive results.
I always contact MDN whenever I need a medical diagnosis. More often than not they tell me to go fsck myself. (File System Check)
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What?! No universal medicare diatribe about how old people are going to die because of universal medicare?
Yeah, the FDA. Because they care about your health and don’t exist solely to profit the drug companies.
Yep—there’s an appendix for that…