A professional’s medical diagnosis that is made on the basis of the information available at the time is called a preliminary diagnostic. When a case is first given to a clinician, a provisional diagnosis is made, and more tests or data are needed before an accurate diagnosis can be made.
Provisional denotes an existence up until a permanent replacement. Ideally, after initial testing is finished and more data is acquired, a provisional diagnosis becomes a precise diagnosis.
In some instances, doctors will provide a differential diagnosis that presents many possibilities based on the patient’s symptoms in an effort to rule out each specific possibility and diagnose the patient.