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Difference between revisions of "Logic of medical language"
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== | ==Medical language is an extended natural language== | ||
Language is a source of misunderstandings and errors and in medicine: actually, often the language we use leaves us in trouble because it is semantically underdeveloped and does not agree with standard scientific ideas. To better explain this concept, which apparently seems off-topic, we must describe some essential characteristics of the logic of language that will make us better understand why a term like ''orofacial pain'' can take on a different meaning following a classical logic or a formal one. | |||
The passage from classical logic to formal logic does not imply adding a minor detail as it requires an accurate description. Although medical and dental technology has developed breathtaking models and devices in many dentistry rehabilitation disciplines, such as electromyographs, cone-beam CT, oral digital scan, etc., the medical language still needs improvement. | |||
First of all, we must distinguish between natural languages (English, German, Italian, etc.) and formal languages, such as mathematics. The natural ones emerge naturally in social communities as much as in scientific communities. Simultaneously, the formal languages are artificially built for use in disciplines such as mathematics, logic and computer programming. Formal languages are characterized by ''syntax'' and ''semantics'' with precise rules, while a natural language has a fairly vague syntax known as ''grammar'' and lacks any explicit semantics. | |||
To keep this study active and engaging, and to avoid it degenerating into a boring treatise on the philosophy of science, let’s consider a very explanatory clinical case. We will deal with it using different languages: | |||
*[[ | *[[The logic of the classical language|Classical language]], | ||
*[[ | *[[The logic of the probabilistic language|Probabilistic language]], | ||
*[[ | *[[Fuzzy language logic|Fuzzy logic]] and | ||
*[[ | *[[System logic|Logic of System]]. | ||
=== | ===Clinical case and logic of medical language=== | ||
Patient Mary Poppins (obviously a fictitious name) was followed and treated for over 10 years by multiple colleagues, including dentists, family doctors, neurologists and dermatologists. Her brief story is as follows: | |||
* | *the woman first noticed small patches of abnormal pigmentation on the right side of her face at the age of 40 (she was now 50). <br>On her admission to a dermatological division, a skin biopsy was performed, and it was consistent with the diagnosis of localized scleroderma of the face ('''morphea''');<br>corticosteroids were prescribed. | ||
* | *At the age of 44, she began to have involuntary contractions of the right masseter and temporal muscles; the contractions increased in duration and frequency over the years. The spasmodic contractions were referred to by the patient as both day and night lock.<br>At her first neurological evaluation, dyschromia was less evident. Still, her face was asymmetrical due to a slight indentation of the right cheek and marked hypertrophy of the masseter and right temporal muscles. <br>The diagnoses were varied, due to the limitation of the medical language as we will see below. | ||
The clinical scenario can be reduced to the following: the patient expresses in her natural language the psychophysical state that has long afflicted her; the dentist, after having performed a series of tests such as anamnesis, a stratigraphy and a CT scan of the TMJ (Figures 1, 2 and 3), concludes with a diagnosis of 'Temporomandibular Disorders', which we call 'TMDs'<ref>{{cita libro | |||
| autore = Tanaka E | | autore = Tanaka E | ||
| autore2 = Detamore MS | | autore2 = Detamore MS | ||
| Line 88: | Line 88: | ||
| oaf = <!-- qualsiasi valore --> | | oaf = <!-- qualsiasi valore --> | ||
| PMID = 30122441 | | PMID = 30122441 | ||
}}</ref>; | }}</ref>; the neurologist remains instead on a diagnosis of organic neuromotor pathology of the 'neuropathic Orofacial Pain' (<sub>n</sub>OP) type, excluding the TMDs component, or does not consider the main cause. To not sympathize with either the dentist or the neurologist in this context, we will consider the patient suffering from ‘TMDs/<sub>n</sub>OP’; so nobody fights. | ||
{{q4|<!--31-->But who will be right?}} | {{q4|<!--31-->But who will be right?}} | ||