Isabel Healthcare Blog

What's your Medical Diagnosis: intractable vomiting

Written by Megan Pennie | Fri, Sep 21, 2012 @ 03:46 PM
The Isabel diagnosis tool touts an extensive database of conditions for differential diagnosis support, and we often will test its accuracy with real patient cases from the New England Journal of Medicine.

About the Isabel Diagnosis Challenge

The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) publishes interesting presentations of common diseases and unusual cases in the Clinical pathology Conference (CPC) series. These cases are educational and can pose diagnostic challenges even to the expert physicians at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

Using the clinical features of these cases you can evaluate your own diagnostic skills and compare your diagnostic performance to that of the physicians at MGH. If you are registered with Isabel as a client or have a free-trial subscription, you can use the diagnosis reminder system and run through some scenarios to get a list of likely suspects. Clicking on a diagnosis will take you through to various knowledge sources and links available from within Isabel.

Case 2012:#22.

Today's Case

Demographic: Male, 34 years, North America
Clinical features extracted from the case and entered into the query box:

  • severe vomiting
  • abdominal pain
  • nausea
  • diarrhea


STOP! Before reading further, construct your own: Final diagnosis

Final Diagnosis of the case according to NEJM: Antimony poisoning due to ingestion of tartar emetic (antimony potassium tartrate).
Was the final diagnosis given by Isabel: Yes, Drug overdose/poisoning in Toxicology