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It happens to every medical student sooner or later. You get a cough that
persists for a while. Ordinarily,you would just ignore it--but now, armed with
your rapidly growing medical knowledge, you can’t help worrying. The cough could
mean just a cold, but it could also be a sign of lung cancer.
For doctors in training, nurses and medical journalists, hypochondria is an
occupational danger. The feeling usually passes after a while, leaving only a
funny story to tell at a dinner party. But for the tens ofthousands who suffer
from true hypochondria they live in constant terror that they are dying of some
awfuldisease, or even several awful diseases at once. Doctors can assure them
that there’s nothing wrong, but since the cough is real, the assurances fall on
deaf ears. And because no physician or test can offer a 100% guarantee that one
doesn’t have cancer, a hypochondriac always has fuel to feed Iris .or her worst
fears.
Hypochondriacs don’t harm just themselves; they block the whole healthcare
system. Although they account for only about 6% of the patients who visit
doctors every year, they tend to burden their physicians with frequent visits
that take up excessive amounts of time. And the problem may be worse, thanks to
the popularity of medical information on the Internet. They go on the Web and
learn about new diseases and new presentations of old diseases that they never
even knew about before. Doctors have taken to calling this phenomenon
cyberchondria (网络疑病症).
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