Medicina y lógica: el proceso diagnóstico en neurología

Medicine and logic: the diagnosis process in neurology How do doctors think when they ought to solve the enigma: what is my patient suffering from? Such is the question behind this article. Our analysis rests on real life situations, where medical residents discuss specific cases in neurology, aiming at a joint diagnosis. Our theoretical thesis claims that the diagnostic process has a rational component that lends itself to logical reconstruction, though it still requires the personal presence of a medical doctor. By presenting a particular case in neurology we show how the cognitive process, which strive at the several diagnoses of this specialty, namely the syndromatic, topographic and etiologic, is reconstructed via abductive reasoning, in combination with deductive reasoning when discarding diagnostic hypotheses is in order. This analysis supports the idea that clinical judgment, which goes back to the XIXth century and rests upon a rational medicine based on diagnostics, is very much in use. Key words: Medical logic, medical knowledge, diagnosis, neurology, cognitive process, abduction, deduction, induction, inference to the best explanation.