Sir, both we as doctors and our patients suffer due to easily accessible online websites for diagnosing illnesses. One patient came to my practice very distressed. He entered my room with an open laptop in his hand accompanied by his concerned brother. This patient had been suffering from a headache radiating from his teeth to almost the tip of his toes, he said. He also complained of a weak jaw joint on the same side. It was of course a TMPDS case, but the interesting thing was that the patient said he went to several doctors for the condition and had the bridges, crowns and even teeth on both the arches removed and finally searched on the Internet and diagnosed his condition as Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease. The name sounded a bit familiar to me, but I was convinced that it was nothing related to the teeth. I did not check it on the Internet in front of the patient, but just reassured him and his brother that there was nothing wrong with his teeth and also advised a psychiatric consultation to relieve his stress.

When I checked out the disease on the Internet myself I realised that I should have clarified in front of the patient that this disease has no association with the teeth and its name is derived from the names of the three physicians who first identified it (in 1886): Jean Martin Charcot, Pierre Marie, and Howard Henry Tooth.