Mike Shyu didn’t think much of the bug bite on his arm.

It was summer. He was outside. Bug bites happen.

But soon, the small, red bump didn’t look so normal anymore. It started to travel up his arm – nearly an inch every minute – and he was rushed to the emergency room, despite his dislike for hospitals.

The doctors treated the infected bug bite with intravenous antibiotics and sent Shyu on his way.

But three days after leaving the hospital, he felt sick. He had come down with a fever and body aches. He lost his appetite. Those seemed like fairly normal flu-like symptoms, so Shyu didn’t pay much heed. Even after a week of feeling miserable, Shyu wasn’t eager for another hospital visit.

‘I really don’t like hospitals,’ Shyu, a fifth-year architecture student, said. ‘It’s the sheer amount of time that they take out of your day.’

Instead, he did what many college students do. He typed his symptoms into WebMD’s Symptom Checker.

Rather than spitting out the usual laundry list of possible diagnoses, WebMD’s Symptom Checker told Shyu to ‘go to the hospital immediately.’

It turned out Shyu had an allergic reaction to the antibiotics he received on his first hospital visit – a life-threatening reaction. He said he would have eventually gone to the hospital without getting WebMD’s urgent message, but he likes to use the site to verify his self-diagnoses. The message he received came as a surprise.

‘The severity is what made it crazy,’ he said.

Medical sites such as WebMD and Mayo Clinic are user-friendly and free of charge, making them less time-consuming alternatives to visiting Syracuse University Health Services or the emergency room. For college students, who use the Internet for just about everything from shopping to rating their professors, visiting the site seems like a natural step to take.

SU Health Services declined to comment for this story.Amory Hillengas tries to avoid going to Health Services as much as possible.

‘It’s easier for me to check the site than go to a doctor,’ said Hillengas, a junior environmental science and geography major. ‘…It’s a lot more effort to make a call, make an appointment, go in, than using the Web, especially if it’s not too serious.’

But with the good, comes the bad. While WebMD offers diagnoses for users’ symptoms, it also creates a seemingly never-ending list of what ailments might be.

‘It can be misleading and can cause undue anxiety,’ said Thomas Beatty, chair of the department of obstetrician and gynecology at Newton-Wellesley Hospital in Massachusetts.

In addition to using sites like WebMD, people search for their symptoms using Google. Google, which is able to track the frequency and geographic origin of searches, has turned this information into a new feature called Google Flu Trend.

The tool tracks where and when users search for flu symptoms, which in large enough numbers, can indicate the potential for an outbreak. This provides advanced warning to hospitals and doctors. Google Flu Trend has been able to detect flu outbreaks up to 10 days before the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, which relies on reports from hospitals, according to a New York Times article.

Still, the up-and-coming medical sites such as WebMD and Mayo Clinic are popular.

The sites are ‘well-vetted,’ said Dessa Bergen-Cico, an associate professor of health and wellness in the College of Human Ecology.

She finds WebMD to be user-friendly, largely because it uses the vernacular and the information is very accessible. An expert in the field of health and wellness, Bergen-Cico once used the Web site for a midnight diagnosis of her daughter’s appendicitis.

‘I wanted an answer right away,’ she said.

After looking up her daughter’s symptoms, Bergen-Cico took her daughter in for a 3 a.m. surgery.

Bergen-Cico, who used to work at SU Health Services, said she has seen an increase in students visiting medical Web sites to learn more about their symptoms. She said this could be due to some of the uncomfortable information college-aged students might need to look up, like sexual health or eating disorders.

‘Just because you go to a doctor doesn’t mean people are comfortable,’ Bergen-Cico said.

Because users can easily understand WebMD’s information, experts said a lot of good can come from using the site, but it shouldn’t be a substitute for seeing a doctor.

Both Beatty and Newton-Wellesley general practitioner Avrohm Melnick have patients who gather information from WebMD before visiting the doctor.

Melnick said in an e-mail that his patients don’t diagnose themselves before coming in to see him, but they do collect information from WebMD to have a better understanding of the medical jargon.

He said he is concerned that people will start to self-diagnose, which can cause greater harm to their health.

Even though students have a wealth of information at their fingertips with the Internet and sites such as WebMD, some experts are confident they won’t rely solely on the sites without seeing a doctor.

‘It is a tool to help them understand,’ Beatty said. ‘I haven’t seen people using the site instead of seeking care.’

Elyssa Baumohl uses the site to quickly check her symptoms but will also visit the doctor. In fact, she finds the site relatively unhelpful for the same reason Beatty cautions using the site.

‘It makes me more crazy thinking that I have things wrong with me that I really don’t,’ said Baumohl, a senior political science and Spanish major.

Shyu, who used the site to confirm that he needed immediate medical attention for an allergic reaction, said visiting a doctor will depend on the severity of his symptoms.

‘Sometimes I use it instead of going to the doctor,’ he said. ‘It depends upon the severity. If I have a mysterious stomachache and I’m bedridden, I’d rather find the over-the-counter solution than pay for a hospital bill. But I’m obviously not going to use it if I’m bleeding profusely or have a broken arm; I’m just going to the hospital instead.’

[email protected]

Published on November 19, 2008 at 12:00 pm