Berttheduck@lemmy.ml 12 hours ago
This is a big problem with medicine in general. Medicine is unfortunately very much an old white man’s club, it’s getting better slowly, but all the knowledge and the way it is taught comes from that old white guy standard.
Medical terminology is complex because medicine is complex. There is definitely an element of being part of an exclusive club but there is also communicating lots of information quickly and efficiently.
Frontotemporal dementia describes a specific set of symptoms and if you are medically trained tells you most everything you need to know about what is happening. As opposed to the patient is a bit confused or sees things sometimes which could be many different things.
The language and how diagnoses are communicated are really important, a good medic should tell the patient their diagnosis with the medical words but should explain what those mean in as much detail as the patient wants.
Most patients are able to understand dementia even if the frontotemporal bit doesn’t make sense to them.
over_clox@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
Official medical terminology tends to be based off of Latin. How many people do you know that speak Latin?
Benadryl is the consumer friendly name for diphenhydramine hydrochloride. And yes I just pulled those letters out of my ass, I learned long ago that brand name Benadryl is expensive, but far cheaper alternatives exist.
I guess that is sort of the opposite of my thought though, my point is that important things should be easier to remember, especially those with brain/memory issues. Just because I can remember and spell long and complicated words, doesn’t mean everyone else can…
paraplu@piefed.social 2 hours ago
You don't need to speak Latin to notice common roots and get a gist for what a term means.
If you're actually in a position where it's useful to distinguish one type of dementia from another, having a meaning that's linked to what the symptoms are may help you remember both name and symptoms.
If you're not a medical professional, remembering either name or symptoms for specific types of dementia is unlikely to be useful.
over_clox@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
You’re missing the whole point.
The disabled patient should be able to memorize the name of their own condition, if at all possible at least. Disabled people don’t 100% of the time have people available to help.
Berttheduck@lemmy.ml 11 minutes ago
The problem with this point relating to dementia is that dementia specifically makes forming new memories harder. So they are unlikely to remember any specifics including their diagnosis. Also for the patient saying dementia or memory problems will be more than enough to tell everyone who’s not a doctor.
The frontotemporal bit won’t mean anything to the general public unless they remember more human anatomy than most, but everyone has heard of dementia that one is in common parlance anyway I think.
Squirrelsdrivemenuts@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
I would counter that the medical term is descriptive. Tell anyone with medical/medicine-related education someone has frontotemporal dementia and they know what is going on with the patient and what bodypart is affected. We can simplify with just “dementia” or a simpler term but you loose the specific meaning. Just like cancer is a two syllable simple word but a proper diagnosis includes way more information and has a more difficult term related. Equally, while the layman may prefer teflon and benadryl, the chemical/scientific name tells a trained person exactly what they are dealing with without having to look anything up, and does not suffer from different names across languages/borders. You cannot force simpler names as they will not be used in the medical/scientific community, so only if a disease is common enough to enter most peoples vocabulary will they come up with simpler terms or remember the term easily.
over_clox@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
Yes, the medical term is clearly more descriptive. For medical professionals.
That doesn’t make it any easier for the patients suffering brain/memory problems to remember or explain their own condition.
We’ve made acronyms for everything else under the sun …LMFAO…
Squirrelsdrivemenuts@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
But who does the patient need to communicate it to other than health professionals? Other people should be satisfied with a phrase like “dementia that causes me to behave different and/or have difficulty speaking” otherwise they are just going to have to look up the disease anyway.
FTD is a rare disease (meaning less than 65/100000 people get it in their lifetime) and there are thousands of rare diseases. Who do you propose should come up with simple names for all of these, teach these to all medical professionals and make sure all info online gets both the descriptive and simple name attached?? There are enough issues with terminology in the medical world as is, trust me.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
There are too many terms. If you simplified every medical term you’d end up with too many words that were almost identical but meant very different conditions.
I see it like thinking you could compress all possible number strings to a simpler number that’s easier to remember.