title: Logic structure of clinical judgment and its relation to medical and psychiatric semiology.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The logical nature of clinical judgment has been conceptualized in different ways, but a clear connection between the features of clinical judgment and those of semiology is still lacking.
  
  
  METHODS
  The characteristics of clinical judgment, medical semiology, and psychiatric semiology are described. Connections between them are drawn.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Clinical judgment is described as an abductive inference. Abductive inferences are especially useful to balance universal and singular information. In psychiatric semiology, due to some specific features, a careful balance between the information present in descriptive definitions and the information absent from the definition but present in singular symptoms is needed. The main types of out-of-definition information are reviewed.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The implications of the results for diagnosis and research are drawn.
authors.affiliation: Hospital Universitario de La Princesa, Madrid, España. crejon@hotmail.com
authors.forename: Carlos
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Rejón Altable
mesh_terms: D002983:Clinical Competence; D003933:Diagnosis; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008128:Logic; D011570:Psychiatry / Q000379:methods*