ISSN: 2639-2038
Authors: Turabian JL*
Traditionally, the diagnosis has focused on the symptoms, which must be ordered so that they can be integrated into the intelligible sets of diseases. General medicine and epidemiology, each one for their part, have traditionally tried to identify, catalogue diseases and health problems. But, the diseases are, at each time, different: the gold standards disappear or are attenuated for the diagnosis of many health problems, which brings with it a number of imperfect clinical and research criteria used, with symptoms that overlap and cause biases by misclassification in epidemiological studies. Currently there is a tremendous acceleration in the transformation of disease symptoms, favoured by a series of factors that overlap and feedback: 1) The greater access to medical services and the early treatment of many diseases or symptoms; 2) The health paradox; 3) The evolution of the cultural context; 4) The medicalization of symptoms and risk factors; 5) Overdiagnosis; 6) Overtreatment; 7) The creation of new diseases; 8) The overuse of prevention; 9) The presence of multimorbidity and polypharmacy; 10) The high frequency of adverse drug reactions and drug-drug interactions; And 11) The epidemiological transitions. Consequently, we must see the new symptoms that make up new pathological entities, as if they were living beings that beat, such as the notes in a musical score or the figures of mysterious constellations. A new way of classifying diseases according to their symptoms is necessary, which may include categories of classification as simple / complicated, transitional, and unordered (chaotic), "warm" or "cold"; problems that "advance" or "recede"; "expanding", or "contracting", that jump from centrality to eccentricity, from bustle to silence, or vice versa.
Keywords: Epidemiology; Community Medicine; General practitioner; Overdiagnosis; Disease; Diagnosis; Definition; Misclassification; Multimorbidity; Polypharmacy; Drug-Related Side Effects; Adverse Reactions
