Symptomatology : Symptoms & their causes
In order to make proper diagnosis post history taking, here we are eliciting some of the common symptoms which the patients presents with & their causes are given below:
1. Weight Loss
- Caloric malnutrition e.g. fasting, inappropriate diet
- Chronic infections e.g. HIV infection, infective endocarditis, tuberculosis, amebic liver abscess, fungal infections etc.
- Acute infections e.g. viral hepatitis, typhoid, septicemia
- Malignancy
- Malabsorption syndrome
- Endocrine diseases e.g. diabetes mellitus, thyrotoxicosis, panhypopituitarism, addison’s disease etc.
- Anorexia nervosa
2. Weight Gain
- Increased tissue mass e.g. obesity, endocrine disease (cushing’s disease, hypothyroidism, acromegaly etc.), hypothalamic diseases (craniopharyngioma, frohlich’s syndrome, hamartoma etc.), drugs (steroids etc.)
- Increased water retention e.g. cardiac failure, liver cirrhosis, nephrotic syndrome, hypoproteinemia, edema states etc.
3. Anorexia
- Viral hepatitis
- Tuberculosis
- Malignancies like carcinoma of stomach
- Endocrine diseases e.g panhypopituitarism, addison’s disease etc.
- Chronic wasting diseases e.g. uremia, liver cirrhosis, chronic alcoholism, chronic smoking etc.
- Drugs e.g. digitalis, quinine, metronidazole etc.
4. Fever
- Infections e.g. bacterial, viral, rickettsial, fungal parasites etc.
- Neoplasms e.g. Any neoplasm but commonly with hypernephroma, lymphoproliferative malignancies, carcinoma of pancreas, lung & bone, hepatoma.
- Vascular e.g. acute myocardial infarction, pulmonary embolism, pontine hemorrhage etc.
- Traumatic e.g. crush injury
- Immunological e.g. collagen disease, SLE, rheumatoid arthritis, drug fever, serum sickness
- Endocrine e.g. thyrotoxicosis, addison’s disease
- Hematological e.g. acute hemolytic crisis
- Physical agents e.g. heat stroke, radiation sickness
- Habitual hyperprexia
- Factitious fever
- Cyclic neutropenia
6. Chest pain
- Cardiac e.g. ischemic heart disease, pericarditis, infective endocarditis, cardiomyopathy, valvular heart disease, dissecting aneurysm of aorta etc.
- Respiratory e.g. pleurisy, pneumothorax, pulmonary embolism, pulmonary hypertension, malignancy.
- Musculoskeletal e.g. rib fracture, vertebral collapse, costochondritis, myositis of pectoral muscle etc.
- Functional
- Esophagitis
- Peptic ulcer
- Pancreatitis
- Cholecystitis
- Splenic flexure syndrome
- Herpes zoster of intercostal nerves.
7. Dyspnea
- Physiological e.g. mountaineers, exercise, hyperpyrexia, anemia
- Respiratory e.g. airway obstruction, bronchial asthma, COPD, pulmonary infections, pulmonary edema, pulmonary embolism, bronchogenic carcinoma, pleural effusion, pneumothorax etc.
- Cardiac e.g. acute myocardial infarction, valvular heart disease, left ventricular failure, congenital cyanotic heart disease etc.
- Metabolic e.g. diabetes, uremia, hypokalemia
- Neurological e.g. respiratory center depression as in syringobulbia, motor neuron disease, guillain barre syndrome, bulbar polio, myasthenia gravis etc.
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