Evidence Based Physical Medicine in Internal Medicine

Author(s): Zouna Frank, Ngomba Maryl

Introduction: The teaching of physical examination is based on medical textbooks. In the era of technology and evidence-based medicine, clinician should be able to perform and accurate physical examination. In this review, we propose a new way of doing physical examination with accuracy.

Methods: We searched PubMed from 1980 to 2022. We included studies that compared physical examination with imaging, electrophysiological studies and intraoperative findings.

Results: We have identified a bare minimum for head to toes examination. The content is vital signs, eyes inspection, mouth inspection, lymph nodes palpation, thyroid palpation, lungs examination (inspection, percussion and auscultation), heart examination (inspection and auscultation), abdomen (inspection and palpation), vascular examination (dorsalis pedis and posterior tibial artery palpation), neurologic examination (eyes movement, facial strength, tongue, thumb rolling test, ankle reflex, gait).

Conclusions: Physical examination of human major systems can be done within 10 minutes with accuracy.