1. What are the top 10 medical problems/conditions?
2. What are the top 10 symptoms/chief-complaints that people see their doctor for?

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Request for Question Clarification by mvguy-ga on 21 Jun 2002 05:59 PDT

What do you mean by top 10?  Most common?  Most deadly?  Most
expensive to treat?  Most serious?  Also, what geographical area? 
Some of the world's most serious medical problems are almost unknown
in the U.S. and Western Europe, for example. Thanks!

Hi!

You should know that this kind of rankings change from one region to
another. This information is just a US statistic.

The ranking for top ten medical problems (here you have information
for both disease and symptomatology) is:
Rank 	Condition 
1	Back or neck problems 
2	Allergies 
3	Arthritis or rheumatism 
4	Difficulty walking 
5	Frequent headaches 
6	Lung problems 
7	Digestive problems 
8	Gynecological problems 
9	Anxiety attacks 
10	Heart problems or chest pain 

According to a chart with the "10 Most Frequently Reported Principal
Medical Conditions" and most frequent treatments at:
http://oldfraser.lexi.net/publications/pps/21/table7.html

Find the "Ten of the Most Common Backcountry Medical Problems" at:
http://sanfranciscobay.sierraclub.org/backpacking/Leaders_Corner/Most%20CommonBackcountryMedProblems.htm

You may be also interested in:

Statistic of number of deaths and death rates, by cause, sex and age
for US:
http://www3.who.int/whosis/whsa/whsa_table1_process.cfm?path=whosis,whsa,whsa_table1,endpoint&language=english

Statistic of number of deaths and death rates, by cause, sex and age
(International survey):
http://www3.who.int/whosis/whsa/whsa_table1.cfm?path=whosis,whsa,whsa_table1&language=english

Check many other halth related stats at:
National Center for Health Statistic
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/

World health organization
http://www.who.int

Good luck with your research!
Runix-ga

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Clarification of Answer by runix-ga on 21 Jun 2002 09:49 PDT

Sorry, I forgot to tell about the search strategy I used.
Keywords:
"Most common diseases"
"medical problems"
statistic AND disease
statistic AND symptoms
on

://www.google.com
http://www.alltheweb.com

If you search for "most common symptoms" the problem is that you'll
always find "Most common symptoms of <any particular disease>", that's
why is better to look for charts or statistics.

You didn't specify the area you are interested in- eg. UK, USA etc.
However, if you are after world-wide statistcs, why not try the World
Health Organisation statistics website at: http://www.who.int/whosis/
It definitely shows the most common causes of death in the world.
It's also difficult to measure the most common conditions, because
they may not be reported. Some examples are the common cold, insects
bites etc. Hope that helps, anyway.

In asking for the top medical problems, you also need to define your
criteria.  Do you mean the top ten killer diseases, the diseases with
the greatest social and economic cost, or the diseases with the
greatest impact on quality of life?

As for symptoms reported to GPs, a survey in the UK showed that 39% of
GPs' time is taken up with minor ailments, and these account for 14%
of all prescriptions.  On average, an asult in the UK experiences 5.2
minor ailments in every two weeks and in each two-week period 8% of
the population visit their GP because of a minor ailment. From an
industry sector analysis of OTC medications:
http://www.corporateinformation.com/data/statusa/ukotcpharm.html