A diagnosis of bacterial diseases may be delayed because some symptoms are vague, nonspecific, or may initially be mild. These include body aches, weight loss, fatigue, or irritability. Other symptoms, such as chest pain, headache, cough, or diarrhea, may initially be assumed to be related to another condition, such as influenza, "stomach flu", migraine headache or a cold.
Unfortunately, some bacterial diseases, such as meningitis, can progress very rapidly and result in death. Because of the risk of the develoment of serious complications and death for some bacterial diseases, it is vital that people who have symptoms, such as fever, chills, vomiting, diarrhea, intense headache, and stiff neck, or have been exposed to bacterial diseases, seek immediate medical care....more about Bacterial diseases »
The other diseases for which Bacterial diseases is listed as a possible alternative diagnosis in their lists include:
Antibiotics often causes diarrhea: The use of antibiotics are very likely to cause some level of diarrhea in patients. The reason is that antibiotics kill off not only "bad" bacteria, but can also kill the "good" bacteria in the gut. This leads to "digestive imbalance" where there are too few remaining "good" bacteria in the digestive system. The treatment is typically to use "probiotics", such as by eating yoghurt cultures containing more of the good bacteria. See digestive imbalance and probiotics.
The following medical news items are relevant to misdiagnosis of Bacterial diseases:
Read these general articles with an overview of misdiagnosis issues.
When checking for a misdiagnosis of Bacterial diseases or confirming a diagnosis of Bacterial diseases, it is useful to consider what other medical conditions might be possible misdiagnoses or other alternative conditions relevant to diagnosis. These alternate diagnoses of Bacterial diseases may already have been considered by your doctor or may need to be considered as possible alternative diagnoses or candidates for misdiagnosis of Bacterial diseases. For a general overview of misdiagnosis issues for all diseases, see Overview of Misdiagnosis.
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