The term medicine encompasses everything about health, doctors, and diseases for many people. However, there are different types, one of which is preventive medicine. Although it can be confused with the general, this type is responsible more than anything for preventing diseases and conditions. Of course, every medical act seeks to prevent an illness or aggravation. For that reason, today, we will talk about preventive medicine.
What is preventive medicine?
Preventive medicine is simply the part of medicine that prevents diseases and health conditions. Therefore, health professionals seek to use methods and techniques that promote a healthy life. Sometimes, a simple habit that seems small can prevent millions of deaths, as is the case with washing hands.
Although the organism may seem the same, it turns out that the unique characteristics of each patient can make a difference when making a medical care plan since it is not just giving useful advice that can improve the patient’s life. Nonetheless, it is about creating good habits to prevent diseases or even delay the progress of some birth or hereditary conditions.
Types of preventive medicine
- Primary prevention: you can find actions that focus on healthy people and prevent diseases at this stage. Most of these actions focus on campaigns from the government and health agencies. Vaccines are a perfect example of this primary level.
- Secondary prevention: campaigns and movements focused on detecting diseases early to save many lives are found at this level. A great example of them is the campaigns to prevent and detect breast cancer.
- Tertiary prevention: this level focuses entirely on prevention and the care required to treat, stop or mitigate the progress of already diagnosed and established diseases. For this, there are several examples: the rehabilitation and lifelong care that a patient who suffered a myocardial stroke must do; or the care that a cancer patient in remission should have.
- Quaternary prevention: this is responsible for mitigating and reducing the consequences of medical treatments, such as the use of thyroid protectors in dental x-rays.
Preventive medicine may seem confusing or meaningless when you think of general medicine, but it plays a critical role in controlling, mitigating, and recovering from many conditions. For more information, come and visit us. We have a professional team ready to attend to you, do not hesitate to stay tuned to the blog for more articles.