Humans are vulnerable to illnesses. These illnesses can either be something simple like the common cold or something hazardous like cancer. Timely medical intervention can help you recover and heal from your condition, and it may even save your life in near-fatal situations.
If you’d like to benefit from specialized medical services in Lanham, MD, US, visit us at Chariss Family Medical Clinic.
Types of medical care services
When it comes to medical services in Lanham, MD, US, there are five types of care that doctors provide:
- Routine care
- Preventive care
- Emergency care
- Diagnostic care
- Curative care
In this article, we’ll be looking at routine and preventive medical care.
What is routine and preventive care?
Technically speaking, routine care is a type of preventive care. Both are done as a matter of routine, even when there is nothing wrong with the patient. These tests are usually done at particular stages of a person’s life.
The ultimate objective of routine care and preventive care is to make sure that doctors identify a person’s vulnerability to diseases or their likelihood of developing a condition by a certain age. Accordingly, it aims to provide treatments that can completely prevent these conditions from setting in.
But despite these extreme similarities, there are minor differences between routine medical care and preventive medical care. Understanding these differences can help you make more mindful medical decisions, which can help save your life or the life of your loved one.
Types of preventive care
To understand the minor differences between these two types of treatments, we need to understand the various types of preventive care first.
There are five types of preventive care that medical services in Lanham, MD, US provide. These are as follows:
Primal and primordial preventive care
As the name suggests, “primordial preventive care” refers to the attention given to the individual, before his/her birth. Here, doctors work with parents-to-be or those who wish to start a family and identify the health risks that parents may pass on to their offspring.
Then, they provide solutions in the form of lifestyle changes or medical treatments, which can give the fetus the best chance to develop into a completely healthy baby.
Primary preventive care
Primary preventive care refers to the tests and physical examinations that medical professionals perform, to find out about the general wellbeing of an individual. Here, the objective is to assess whether a person is vulnerable to a particular medical condition and why.
Here, doctors suggest a combination of lifestyle changes, nutritious meals, exercise, and medication to prevent the onset of diseases and to increase the lifespan and life expectancy of the individual.
Secondary preventive care
In secondary preventive care, doctors work towards identifying illnesses that have already afflicted the patient but are yet to show any symptoms.
For example, a person might be prone to diabetes genetically. If medical tests reveal the onset of diabetes, secondary preventive care will be used to prevent the condition from becoming severe. The objective here is to prevent diabetes from worsening and improve the patient’s quality of life.
Some other illnesses that are screened for during the secondary preventive care stage are:
- Asthma
- Hypertension
- Heart problem
- Infertility & PCOD
- Cancer
Tertiary preventive care
By the time doctors reach the tertiary preventive care stage, the illness will already have manifested severely. However, the objective here is to reduce the disease’s impact on the organs of the body.
Here, doctors test to identify the parts of the body that are most at risk from the illness, and they provide treatments to prevent the further spread of the disease. The goal is to help the patient retain and strengthen their neural, muscular, and cognitive functions. Pain management is a vital part of tertiary preventive care.
For example, if a person has been partially paralyzed due to an illness, tertiary preventive care treatments prevent further paralysis of the body. They also help the patient regain their neuromuscular functions.
Quaternary preventive care
Finally, in the quaternary preventive care stage, the goal of medical professionals is to prevent the implementation of any curative medical treatments. At this stage, the goal is to help the patient get back to health, without the need for extreme therapies like surgery or chemotherapy, or powerful medication.
If, after this stage, the patient’s health starts to worsen, he/she will be put on curative care treatments. On the other hand, if the patient is chronically ill with no chance of recovery, hospice care is recommended.
So, what exactly is the difference between routine care and preventive care?
When we talk of “routine care,” we refer to Primary preventive care. Here, the tests are done as a routine to check on the health of the patient. If anything is found remiss, the doctor suggests solutions to prevent the onset of illness.
All stages after the primary preventive care stage are what doctors usually term “preventive care.” If you’d like medical services in Lanham, MD, US, visit us at Chariss Family Medical Clinic. We specialize in routine care and preventive care. We are here to help you in any way we can.