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 3 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 2 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.
over_clox@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Yeah I get you, ROTFLMFAO!
Oh, I meant LOL…
The internet has no shortage of creative yet simple three letter acronyms, what makes brain issues any different? If anything, people suffering brain issues should be the first to get simplified terminology.
Like, what if Mr. Willis was just an average everyday person, same issues, but wanting a second opinion from another doctor? Not saying the second opinion would or would not be any different, but how would a patient with brain/memory issues even explain him/herself privately?
Not everyone with brain issues even has anyone to help them properly.