Clinical Signs & Eponyms — The Examination Signs Guide

A clinical sign is something a clinician can observe or elicit during a physical examination — as opposed to a symptom, which is what the patient feels and reports. A sign might be something seen (a rash or bruise), felt (a lump or a vibration), heard through a stethoscope (a murmur or a sound), or produced by a specific manoeuvre, such as tapping over a nerve or bending a joint in a particular way.

Each sign page says what a positive finding is associated with — meaning the conditions in which the sign is found more often — rather than what it proves. Most signs are suggestive, not conclusive: the same sign can appear in several conditions, and many people with a condition never show the sign at all. That is why signs are always interpreted together with the history, the rest of the examination and, where needed, tests.

An eponym is a sign, disease or test named after a person — usually the clinician who first described it. Murphy’s sign, Kernig’s sign and Babinski’s sign are famous examples. About two-thirds of the signs in this guide are eponyms, and each of those pages includes a short note about the person behind the name.

Almost never. Signs vary in how reliable they are: a few are powerful, many are modest clues, and some traditional signs — such as Homan’s sign for a leg vein clot — are now known to be unreliable and have been replaced by scoring systems, blood tests and scans. Where a sign’s limitations are well documented, the page says so.

Use it as a revision and reference companion: look a sign up by name with the search box, browse by body system before a ward round or an exam, or follow the A–Z list. Each page explains what the sign is, how it is elicited, what a positive finding is associated with, and — for eponyms — who it is named after.