Aunt Millie approach

An unsound—albeit often applied and diagnostically useful—philosophy for clinical decision-making, derived from the following quip: ‘Why is it Aunt Millie? Because it looks like Aunt Millie.’

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Aunt Millie approach

Pattern recognition Medtalk An unsound–albeit often applied—philosophy for clinical decision-making, from the quip:

How do I know it's Aunt Millie?
Because it looks like Aunt Millie

Pattern recognition is the traditional model for teaching pathology and radiology, both of which are visual 'arts'; although it allows molding of future generations in an accepted paradigm, exceptions to any 'rules' are generally relegated to wastepaper basket categories, as exceptions cannot be explained or understood in an arbitrarily-defined context. Cf Heuristic method, Stochastic process.

McGraw-Hill Concise Dictionary of Modern Medicine. © 2002 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.