Effectiveness of early detection of diseases

Abstract

Secondary prevention through the early detection of diseases and their resulting early intervention and management, within an individual strategy for the prevention of diseases, has become a widespread practice in the last decade in both primary and specialist care. Similarly, there are demands by professionals and citizens for the health systems to offer prevention programmes and activities. In the application of diagnostic tests in asymptomatic persons, known as disease screening, different consequences are implied that involve both technical and care issues, and work and economic overload on the health services, both if the practice of early detection is due to selective individual indication or due to a public health decision. It is necessary to reflect on the need and opportuneness of such preventive practices, discerning which activities combine conditions in accordance with technical principles and scientific evidence, or if, on the contrary, they are carried out due to routine, simple complacency or pure empiricism. That is why the different prior phases and verifications that the health professional must consider before the broad diagnostic and therapeutic arsenal is applied with preventive aims are discussed.