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Preventive
Medicine
:
In the 1960s and 1970s, physicians and medical educators began to
recognize a basic flaw in the health care system. Medicine traditionally
was concerned with treating disease after symptoms appeared, resulting
in treatment that was often very expensive. About 600,000 coronary
bypass operations were performed annually in the United States in
the 1990s, at a cost of $44,000 each. Medical officials recognized
the advantage of preventing disease in the first place, rather than
just treating it.
Medical
schools began teaching students the importance of disease prevention.
Some physicians specialized in a new field, preventive medicine,
which emphasized keeping patients healthy. Practicing physicians
spent more time counseling patients about smoking, excessive drinking,
and other unhealthy practices. They did so by encouraging patients
to avoid risk factors for disease; take periodic screening tests
that detect disease early; and treat high blood pressure.
Yet
by the late 1990s, many people still failed to use preventive services.
Studies in 1997 estimated that 30,000 deaths per year could have
been prevented if more people were immunized against influenza,
pneumococcal pneumonia, and hepatitis B. Likewise, smoking, the
leading preventable cause of death in the industrialized world,
causes more than 4 million deaths worldwide each year.
Another
dramatic change in medicine involved the idea that individuals have
an important role in preventing diseases caused by an unhealthy
lifestyle. Health care consumers grew more knowledgeable about medicine.
Medical pages became a regular feature of major newspapers, news
magazines, and television news programs. Some people subscribed
to magazines and newsletters devoted entirely to health. Laypeople
consulted books, such as the Physician's Desk Reference and The
Merck Manual, once used only by professionals. They also tapped
health information available on the Internet's World Wide Web (WWW).
With this knowledge, consumers sought to become partners with their
physicians in deciding the best ways of preventing, diagnosing,
and treating disease.
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