2023-05-23 16:18:00
By: Patrick Santillan-Doherty
Illustration: Sergio Bordón, courtesy of Nexos
The signs are important. In medicine, they constitute the essential initial information with which doctors begin to approach a possible hypothesis about what is happening with a patient. Combined with the subjective manifestations that patients tell us (symptoms), they allow the medical professional to carry out an initial analysis exercise to glimpse a possible diagnosis; make a true semiology of what the patient has. Although sign and symbol are often used interchangeably, they have different meanings. The sign is a visual, auditory, palpatory, percussive or some other clue that is capable of transmitting information or meaning. The signs are almost always direct and literal in their meaning (eg, the yellowish tinge of jaundice, the deformity of a bone fracture). Symbols, on the other hand, are visual representations of an idea, concept or object that, sometimes in a somewhat abstract way, allow the interpretation of what is to be symbolized.
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