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Symptoms of a greater problem?

Positive Living article • Adrian Ogier • 2 September 2010
Treating HIV

Understanding symptoms is critical to understanding how someone is experiencing illness. As well as affecting quality of life, particularly bothersome symptoms can impact on adherence to treatment and could be a signal of drug toxicity or some other problem.

Effectively communicating symptoms to your doctor is an important aspect of the doctor-patient relationship. But how seriously your doctor takes notice of them is another story.

Researchers across Canada recently conducted a study1 to see whether doctors agreed with their HIV patients about the symptoms they reported at their most recent clinic visit. The results are interesting because while between 8-35% of patients claimed their symptoms were bothersome, doctors only recognised bothersome symptoms in 0.2-11% of cases.

The greatest discordance, or disagreement, appears to be in areas of memory, sexual problems, intestinal bloating, pain or gas.

The results of this and similar studies underscore an important issue for doctors and their patients.

Put simply: better communication between them is needed.

www.catie.ca

  1. 1. Rachlis A, Gill J, Harris M, et al. Behaviour and attitudes in HIV (Beahiv)
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From Positive Living

This article was first published in the September 2010 issue of Positive Living — more than one year ago.

While the content of this was checked for accuracy at the time of publication, NAPWA recommends checking to determine whether the information is the most up-to-date available, especially when making decisions which may affect your health.

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