Talk:Idiopathic disease

SWAN
A stub on Syndrome without a name was recently turned into a redirect pointing here, with edit summary "this is not a different concept, but another word for the same thing". I'm not so sure but rather than revert that change I have added a section to this article, explaining the term which would otherwise have left the redirect likely to be deleted at RfD as "not mentioned in target article". I'm sure an explanation of the term ought to be in the encyclopedia somewhere. To a non-medic, SWAN is not the same as idiopathic - the latter, as in "idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis", means "we know what's the matter but not what caused it", while "SWAN" is just a sometimes very sick child with no diagnosis at all. (And desperate parents seeking support). Pam D  17:45, 16 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Perhaps it ought instead to be a section in Rare disease, which is the target of the redirect Undiagnosed diseases? Pam  D  18:09, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

Medical advances and this term
In the section discussing medical advances, there is an implicit assumption that understanding one disease or syndrome reduces the total number of idiopathic diseases. The progression of a single malady from idiopathic to understood is a measure of the advancement of medical science. However, the number of idiopathic conditions might well increase faster than research can understand them, so the number of idiopathic maladies could (and I argue, will) increase with time in spite of the advancement of medical knowledge. Wcmead3 (talk) 00:25, 26 August 2023 (UTC)