Saint’s Triad, Occam’s Razor and Hickam’s Dictum

Abstract

A colleague came in to see me recently, as a patient, complaining of left sided abdominal pain, loss of appetite and episodes of vomiting. She has a family history of diverticulitis and she was tender over the descending colon. I said that I thought that she had diverticulitis but the vomiting did not quite fit in with this single diagnosis and that she might have Saint’s triad. The problem then was that neither of us could remember what Saint’s triad was so I had to look it up.