by kgeist 5 hours ago
A few years ago (before the AI craze), I was misdiagnosed with tuberculosis. I had a chronic cough, and an outsourced radiologist at a clinic found signs of tuberculosis. The findings were sent to the city's tuberculosis hospital, as required by the country's law. The doctors there took the radiologist's conclusion at face value and required me to stay at their hospital for at least 8 months under a strict, prison-like regime. There was no option to say no, because I was considered some kind of biohazard, and by law I had to comply.
Before I was admitted, I quickly found another radiologist, who diagnosed pneumonia instead. I sent his report to the chief doctor at the tuberculosis hospital, and after some deliberation they concluded that the original reading was wrong. Turns out the doctors there can't read scans at all and just believe whatever a radiologist says...
The funny thing is, they had already officially put me on the tuberculosis register and didn't want to admit they had made a mistake. So instead, they simply gave me another paper saying that I had been cured of tuberculosis by them... in 7 days. I'm probably the only person in the country to defeat tuberculosis in a week :)
So if you don't trust the radiologist/doctor, maybe find another doctor if you can afford it? You can compare their conclusions and see if they match. Two unrelated doctors or radiologists saying the same thing is probably about as close to the truth as you're going to get. I'm not sure though whether I should trust AI or humans more. AI can hallucinate, but I've been misdiagnosed by humans so many times too...
How is it possible? You can't diagnose tuberculosis just based on imaging and tuberculosis hospital has to know that!
Yeah, I know! It was strange. They gave me a test, and it came back negative, but they insisted it was negative because I had "latent tuberculosis," which supposedly wasn't detectable by the test yet but was about to become active.
I forgot to mention that, besides getting a second opinion from another radiologist, I also took a more modern test at another private clinic. That test has better detection rates than the one the state clinic used, and it came back negative too.
I have suspicions they had some kind of government quota to keep the hospital staffed with patients in order to receive funding. Or they were just completely incompetent. I pushed back by bringing them another radiologist's report and the results of a better test that I paid for myself, so I guess they decided to back down.
I had a similar experience. My son had pneumonia and was still filling pain after 10 days of antibiotics. Took an X-Ray to three different doctors, and only one got the right diagnosis (pleural effusion). It's really something we should have a central place with top notch professionals looking at it, instead having each doctor to find by themselves.
What country / municipality are you in? This is not my understanding of Tuberculosis...