Evaluation of “Ghabrahat” as a medical term: A survey of healthcare professionals

The medium of instruction for medical education in pakistan is english,which results in several words being lost in translation due to the lack of equivalent words in english. ghabrahat is one such commonly used symptom. we conducted a cross sectional descriptive survey of medical students and doctors from four tertiary care hospitals between november 2013 and april 2014 evaluating the term ghabrahat. total 120 participants were interviewed. of these,65.8% had heard of ghabrahat. among those aware of this terminology,60.8% believed they had a good understanding of it. of the total 95% believed ghabrahat still needed further investigation. the participants classified,ghabrahat as benign (18.3%),serious (23.3%) and as an indefinable/vague symptom (48.3%).we concluded that ghabrahat is a symptom commonly encountered in clinical practice. it has a wide variety of expressed meanings and should not be used as a term expressing a single entity,system or disease. © 2016,pakistan medical association. all rights reserved.