Scarlett McNally: Let’s focus on tertiary prevention and perioperative care

We’ve known for millennia that prevention is better than cure. An excellent new report, A Covenant for Health,1 which involved input from across the political spectrum along with the King’s Fund, defines where to act to improve health: nutrition, exercise, pollution, smoking, alcohol, and promotion of mental health.This worthy attempt at prevention is well intentioned, but I predict that it will fail because it mainly concentrates on primary prevention—reducing the risk of ever getting a condition in the first place. Humans and institutions don’t change if they can’t see the immediate benefit. We need a radical shift to incorporate tertiary prevention—meaning that once someone has a medical condition we should focus on interventions that might reduce complications from it.For example, exercise has been described as the “miracle cure”2 and a “wonder drug”3 as part of treatment for most common conditions. Research has even suggested that it can reduce the risk…
Read Original Article: Scarlett McNally: Let’s focus on tertiary prevention and perioperative care »