Women often discovered these symptoms by chance while dressing or bathing.
Twenty-four hadiscovereded the symptoms of breast cancer themselves; two were detected during other medical examinations.
Nevertheless, it has been shown that patients commonly recall the precise time when they first discovered their symptoms [ 12, 23, 31].
In agreement with other studies, this shows that patients tend to recall the precise time when they first discovered their symptoms [ 12, 31] or at least the month and year of this discovery [ 23].
16 31 In one study, some African-American women were too scared to check their breasts, 27 while in another study, 32% of African-American participants with breast cancer reported feeling scared when they discovered their symptoms.
In clinical praxis this would mean that a doctor examines a patient, discovers symptoms and, on the basis of these and knowledge acquired from basic science and personal clinical experience, infers (diagnoses) a specific disease as the possible cause of such symptoms (effect).
45 There was also some evidence of differences between women with and without cancer, suggesting a distinction between what women say they would do if they discovered a symptom, versus what they do with the onset of symptoms.
The aim of the study was to explore women's Help Seeking Behaviour (HSB) for a self discovered breast symptom, in order to gain understanding of women's experience of finding a breast symptom and how this influenced their HSB.
As part of the experiment which was partly government-funded, and was intended to discover which symptoms gave warning of a relapse into schizophrenia a number of schizophrenics were taken off their medicines and allowed to relapse completely.
To discover the symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome, the ICU staff should ask the patient about them directly.
