Differential Diagnosis

When diagnosing the patient, it is important to take all signs into account and differentiate between conditions with similar symptoms, especially in patients whose symptomology matches a plethora of illnesses. Differential diagnosis is used to distinguish between two or more medical conditions that have similar symptoms. Differential diagnosis aids in increased diagnostic accuracy of the diagnosis so that patients can be effectively treated. Differential diagnosis is used often, especially in cases with similar symptoms such as that of the patient in which it is difficult to distinguish been disorders such as in CTE and Alzheimer’s.
It is important to examine other disorders to rule out those with similar symptoms from the actual condition. Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), Parkinson’s disease (PD), and many more conditions. CTE is used to describe brain degeneration caused by head trauma3. Important indicators of CTE are previous head trauma, personality change …show more content…
Asking follow up questions, such as if the patient experiences as tremors and/or any sleep issues. Further testing that could be completed would be would be blood tests to view if the patient has beta-amyloids in their blood using a PET scan with tracers to identify the presence or absence of beta-amyloids. If the patient lacks beta-amyloids, the chances of having Alzheimer’s decrease greatly. Another test which could be performed would be memory tests to test recent memory which is one of the initial signs of Alzheimer; if there is memory loss, that may indicate Alzheimer’s rather than CTE. Completing a genetic panel would be helpful in determining to view if the patient has any of the three genes (APP, PSEN 1, and PSEN 2) are seen in more than 60% of early onset Alzheimer’s patients