A comparison of medical histories reported by dental patients and their physicians

This paper reports on the comparison of 104 patient-provided medical histories and those provided by the patients' physicians. Patient-provided histories were obtained using a written health questionnaire with verbal follow-up. At the level of specific medical conditions, patients and physicians agreed only about half of the time, whereas there was better agreement by systemic disease category (average agreement 77%). Both patients and physicians reported systemic conditions not reported by the other, indicating that neither patients nor physicians can be relied on as the sole source of medical history information. Whenever there is a complex medical history or uncertainty about the completeness of the patient's knowledge and reporting of their medical history, contacts with the patient's physician(s) are indicated.