<P> Some symptoms can be misleading to the patient or the medical practitioner caring for them . For example, inflammation of the gallbladder often gives rise to pain in the right shoulder, which may understandably lead the patient to attribute the pain to a non-abdominal cause such as muscle strain . </P> <P> A sign has the potential to be objectively observed by someone other than the patient, whereas a symptom does not . There is a correlation between this difference and the difference between the medical history and the physical examination . Symptoms belong only to the history, whereas signs can often belong to both . Clinical signs such as rash and muscle tremors are objectively observable both by the patient and by anyone else . Some signs belong only to the physical examination, because it takes medical expertise to uncover them . (For example, laboratory signs such as hypocalcaemia or neutropenia require blood tests to find .) A sign observed by the patient last week but now gone (such as a resolved rash) was a sign, but it belongs to the medical history, not the physical examination, because the physician cannot independently verify it today . </P> <P> Symptomatology (also called semeiology) is a branch of medicine dealing with symptoms . Also this study deals with the signs and indications of a disease . </P>

Whats the difference between primary and secondary effects