A medical sign is an objective indication of some medical fact or characteristic that may be detected by a physician during a physical examination or by a clinical scientist by means of an in vitro examination of a patient.
Signs may have no meaning to the client, and may even go unnoticed, but may be meaningful and significant to the healthcare provider in assisting the diagnosis of medical condition(s) responsible for the patient's symptoms.
Examples include elevated blood pressure, a clubbing of the fingers (which may be a sign of lung disease, or many other things), and arcus senilis.
The term sign is not to be confused with the term indication, which denotes a valid reason for using some treatment.
Read more about Medical Sign: Signs and Semiotics, Eponymous Signs, Signs Versus Symptoms, Types of Signs, Technological Development Creating Signs Detectable Only By Physicians, Signs As Tests, Examples of Signs
Famous quotes containing the words medical and/or sign:
“As we speak of poetical beauty, so ought we to speak of mathematical beauty and medical beauty. But we do not do so; and that reason is that we know well what is the object of mathematics, and that it consists in proofs, and what is the object of medicine, and that it consists in healing. But we do not know in what grace consists, which is the object of poetry.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“When two people decide to get a divorce, it isn’t a sign that they “don’t understand” one another, but a sign that they have, at last, begun to.”
—Helen Rowland (1875–1950)