Differential diagnosis

A structured set of diseases or conditions that could explain a patient's signs and symptoms. Clinicians refine it using history, examination, testing, and the likelihood of each possibility.

Clinical reasoning: The process of interpreting clinical information to make decisions about diagnosis and care. It provides the reasoning framework for building and revising a differential.
Signs and symptoms: Observable findings and subjective experiences associated with a health condition. They are the evidence a differential diagnosis is meant to explain.
Triage: The prioritization of patients according to the urgency of their medical needs. Urgent possibilities must be considered even when they are not the most likely.
Working diagnosis: The provisional diagnosis guiding care while evaluation continues. It selects a leading explanation from the broader differential without proving it.
Bayesian diagnosis: A diagnostic approach that updates disease probabilities as new evidence becomes available. It explains how findings raise or lower the likelihood of each candidate.
Medical history: Information about a person's health, prior conditions, treatments, and relevant circumstances. Prior conditions and exposures change which explanations are plausible.
Clinical decision support system: Software that provides clinicians with patient-specific information to support healthcare decisions. Such systems can suggest candidate diagnoses from recorded findings.
Definitive diagnosis: A diagnosis established with sufficient evidence for the clinical context. It represents a conclusion reached after alternatives have been assessed.
Pretest probability: The estimated chance of a disease before a particular test result is considered. It sets the starting likelihood against which new findings are interpreted.
Physical examination: The assessment of a person's body through observation, palpation, percussion, and auscultation. Examination findings can support or weaken specific candidate conditions.

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