Dominion Clinic

Why Do We Need “Preventive Medicine” ?

For most people a visit to their doctor means they are feeling sick. They have some disturbing symptom - a fever, chest pain, shortness of breath, or some other feeling of being unwell. From that symptom, the GP diagnoses what the illness is and then prescribes the medication required to heal it. That's how our system of medical care has always functioned.

And that approach is fine for many medical problems. Unfortunately, it just doesn't work for some of the most crippling and lethal diseases

that afflict us today. For diseases like cancer and heart disease by the time the person affected is experiencing symptoms the disease is well advanced. This frequently means that considerable damage has already occurred and for many the opportunity to reverse this damage has long passed. It is often the case that waiting till symptoms occur before seeking help from the doctor is often tragically too late.

Tackling the Silent Killers

Coronary heart disease is by far the biggest cause of disability and death in adult New Zealanders today and is a very difficult problem to deal with because it can develop progressively over many years without producing any warning symptoms that might prompt a visit to the doctor. In fact, for around a third of all “heart attack” victims, the first symptom is sudden death.

And heart disease is not the only "silent killer". Many malignant diseases develop just as insidiously. Cancer of the breast is a typical example. Approximately one in 15 New Zealand women will be afflicted by this disease, which generally produces no symptoms till it has reached an advanced stage. Yet with adequate examination, breast cancer can usually be detected in its early stages, when treatment is most likely to be successful.

Preventive Medicine and the Dominion Clinic

Clearly, these "silent killers" must be detected and treated before they produce any symptoms. There is only one way this can be achieved - by the thorough medical examination of apparently healthy people. This is a major function of the Dominion Clinic. But early diagnosis is still only second best. Even better is preventing disease - and, to some extent, this can be done. A recent report of the US National Academy of Sciences estimated that 50 percent of mortality from the ten leading causes of death in the USA could be traced to life-style. In other words, many of our more serious health problems are directly related to the way we live our lives. And so it is necessary to identify potential health hazards in our life style or environment and make changes likely to lead to better health. That's why the Dominion Clinic's approach goes further than the early detection of disease. Just as importantly, it aims to educate, motivate and guide people to healthier living in order to reduce their chances of developing serious illness, and enhance their chances of adding both more years to their life and "more life to their years".

Most of us are aware of the importance of “Preventive Medicine” in our lives already. We don’t wait for the symptoms of Polio to appear and then attempt to treat it. We get vaccinated to ensure we don’t ever get it. Similarly we don’t wait till we’ve caught Typhoid. We ensure that hygienic practices around food and water prevent us catching it in the first place. But for many of these “preventive” practices someone else is responsible for the action needed. Either your GP administers the vaccine or else the local authority undertakes the necessary public works to ensure healthy food and water. With heart disease particularly, the person who is best suited to make sure that I don’t have a heart attack is me.

Approximately one in four New Zealand men will suffer from coronary heart disease before the age of 65. Approximately one in 10 will die of it before age 65.

For women, the figures are better, but hardly inspiring; about one in 18 will die of heart disease before the age of 65. How do you deal with a disease which produces no symptoms till it is too late for really effective treatment?

Prevention is the best answer. Failing that, the next line of defence is early diagnosis.