Quaternary Prevention, What Does It Mean?

Quaternary prevention is the subject of much debate in the medical world. Many professionals do not support its use as a guideline for public health policy, and some even deny its validity.

However, as time goes by and new technological advances emerge, it is clear that we need quaternary prevention. As we will see in this article, the availability of high-quality medical devices for everyone depends on the correct application of quaternary prevention.

Quaternary prevention is defined as measures taken to prevent overuse of medical resources by health professionals and patients. This includes avoiding overtreatment, avoiding unnecessary practices and offering ethical alternatives.

The year 1986 was the starting point for the idea of ​​quaternary prevention. At the time, several medical researchers warned against the medicalization of everyday life. That process has continued despite the warnings.

We must clarify that this prevention is not aimed at eliminating the availability of medical advances. Rather, it is intended to rationalize it. For this reason, it involves patients in the process, as doctors are an additional link in the long chain that sustains the medicalization of everyday life.

Ultimately, the goal is to provide patients with certainty. None of us would like to be subjected to therapeutic incarceration or have to spend more money than we need to.

Types of Prevention

We call this concept quaternary prevention because prevention activities are considered spread out:

• Primary Prevention: This is prevention that applies to people who are not yet sick. The goal is to prevent them from getting sick.
• Secondary prevention: someone has a disease but does not know it because he or she has not yet developed symptoms. If we detect it in time, we improve the prognosis.
• Tertiary prevention: we are already dealing with sick people. Here, doctors propose the best available treatment to prevent fatal outcomes and negative consequences that alter a patient’s future quality of life.
• Quaternary prevention: Finally, the type of prevention that interests us in this article. This is the prevention that limits the arbitrary use of medical resources.

Examples of overmedicalization

We may be able to better understand quaternary prevention with examples of misuse of medical resources. While we may not notice it clearly, the medicalization of what is happening around us has become constant.

One of the abuses is requesting excessive testing to detect diseases. Sometimes some primary prevention tests are needed, but others have no scientific basis.

On the other hand, issues that should be widely known are refuted in light of scientific progress. For example, mammograms are intended for women of precise ages and there is no point in doing them just to clear the doubt in very young women.

Let’s also think about the radiation X-rays or CT scans expose us to. Abuse in requesting these types of images can lead to an increase in radiation-related pathologies.

Medical treatments are no exception to this problem. It is very common for doctors to use antibiotics for viral infections, causing bacterial resistance and side effects in patients. Adding adverse effects worsens and complicates the initial situation, which may have been simple.

Polymedication is another example. Some elderly people take a series of daily pills that interact without improving quality of life. Because each individual specialist prescribes a specific drug, no one checks whether there will be a combination of the effects of one and the other.

How Do Physicians Apply Quaternary Prevention?

It makes sense to ask how to conduct quaternary prevention. One part of the job is for doctors and another part for the patients. That said, it is essential not to confuse primary prevention with treatment.

When a person wants to know his state of health, he does not necessarily have to take his medication with him to the doctor’s consultation. Nor is it necessary to go through a whole series of procedures that yield nothing.

New technology does not always mean better technology. Today, there are antibiotics developed decades ago that are more efficient than the new ones, cheaper and sometimes more harmful.

Mental health also falls victim to the problems of medicalization. There are many children diagnosed with attention deficit disorder and hyperactivity who do not actually meet the criteria. As a result, these children undergo a series of measures that are totally counterproductive in their case.

It’s not something that will change overnight, but it’s a path we need to take. Quaternary prevention can make us safer as patients and make medical resources available to everyone without depleting them.