RT Journal
A1 Ratnoff OD
T1 CLinical interpretation of laboratory tests
JF JAMA
JO JAMA
YR 1969
FD April 21
VO 208
IS 3
SP 537
OP 537
DO 10.1001/jama.1969.03160030111028
UL http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jama.1969.03160030111028
AB In teaching clinical medicine, all of us are accustomed to moralize to our students that the good physician makes a diagnosis by listening to the patient's story and then examining him. The laboratory, we tell them, is a crutch with which we affirm our bedside impression. Of course, whatever the didactic value of such dogma, it is in essence a call for a return to that simpler life when we lived in a rural society and a good glass of beer cost a nickel. In reality, diagnosis can be based only upon objective evidence; all else is surmise. Whatever the history or physical examination reveals, it is study of the peripheral blood smear and bone marrow that affirms that the patient has chronic myeloid leukemia. Our clinical impressions tell us what to look for, but the laboratory tells us what we have found. When we are still without adequate laboratory