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.