కార్డియోవాస్కులర్ ఫార్మకాలజీ: ఓపెన్ యాక్సెస్

నైరూప్య

Preventing diseases is a much better way of doing medicine than treating diseased patients

Moshe Cohen

From a physician's point of view, I would want to be able to diagnose medical conditions before they even appear. This way I could prevent a lot of mortality related suffering, and possibly even to prevent early mortality.  From a patient point of view, I would want my life to have the highest quality with the longest path.From a financial point of view, it is much more cost effective to prevent a disease than to treat it. It is well known that the first and second morbidity and mortality causes in developed countries are cardiovascular diseases and cancer. Treating these patients puts an enormous economic burden and heath care systems and insurance companies all over the world.Many publications, for the last decays, are showing clear benefits of preventive medicine and life quality enhancement over treating diseases. So why is wellness medicine not done properly and to the full extent?I assume that the full answer to this question is rather complicated but the assents of it are very simple to describe.Heath care systems in developed countries are congested with ever increasing number of doctors' appointments, hospitals admissions, and other forms of health care services consumption, which are way beyond their ability to cope and adjust. Better medical services mean a constant increase in life expectancy and as a result, an increase in the consumption of health-related services. This cycle cannot be untied.The bottom line is that the traditional health care systems, all around the world, simply don’t have the resources- mainly time and the manpower, in order to cope with the exponential increase in the populations demand for health care services. This fact is only going to get worst in the future.But that is not the whole picture. There is another dimension to this issue that is often neglected by health care providers, and more over by countries. And that is the patient's perspective.Most of us, humans, are simply not used to think of future planning when it comes to our health. We are constantly bothered by the present- how do we feel today. Sometimes we think about our own and of our relatives past heath issues. But most of us, for various reasons, simply don’t bother ourselves with future heath planning. We seldomly ask ourselves questions like- which diagnostic tests do I need to take during the next year, three years, and five years, in order not to get sick. That is why most of us are walking through the path of life with a clear hope not to be sick, but without an actual planning of how to do that. One of the reasons for our behavior is a false assumption that diseases are either meant to be or not to be. That getting sick is a simple act of faith rather than something that can be actively prevented. This point of view must be changed.It is true that not all diseases and modes of illness can be prevented. And it is true that not all goals s of life quality enhancement can be achieved.Nevertheless, it is commonly known and proved that early diagnosis can prevent a significant fraction of the diseases. It is also well known that lifestyle modification and certain therapies can significantly enhance life quality, and further contribute to diseases prevention.

Conclusion: Correct medicine would do health planning for every person, aimed at risk factors reduction, and improving compliance to therapies for chronic diseases. It is done in a high tech and still personalized manner. It would combine 'out of the box therapies' that are mainly targeting life quality enhancement.