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Levels of Prevention

1. There are 5 levels of prevention in dentistry: primordial, primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary. 2. Primary prevention aims to prevent disease before it occurs through health promotion like education and specific protection like immunizations. It can use population or high-risk strategies. 3. Secondary prevention focuses on early detection of disease through screening and treating it before it advances, to stop complications and spread.

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131 views

Levels of Prevention

1. There are 5 levels of prevention in dentistry: primordial, primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary. 2. Primary prevention aims to prevent disease before it occurs through health promotion like education and specific protection like immunizations. It can use population or high-risk strategies. 3. Secondary prevention focuses on early detection of disease through screening and treating it before it advances, to stop complications and spread.

Uploaded by

Divya More
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC HEALTH DENTISTRY

PEDAGOGY: LEVELS OF PREVENTION

LEVELS OF PREVENTION

• Primordial prevention

• Primary prevention

• Secondary prevention

• Tertiary prevention

• Quaternary prevention

Primordial prevention

It is the prevention of the emergence or development of risk factors in countries or


population groups in which they have not yet appeared. The main intervention is by
individual and mass education.

For example, many adult health problems (e.g., obesity, hypertension) have their
early origins in childhood, because this is the time when lifestyles are formed (for
example, smoking, eating patterns, physical exercise).

• In primordial prevention, efforts are directed towards discouraging children from


adopting harmful lifestyles

• The main intervention in primordial prevention is through individual and mass


education

Primary prevention
• Primary prevention can be defined as the action taken prior to the onset of
disease, which removes the possibility that the disease will ever occur.

• It signifies intervention in the prepathogenesis phase of a disease or health


problem.

• Primary prevention may be accomplished by measures of “Health promotion”


and “specific protection”

Primary prevention
achieved by

Health promotion Specific protection

It is the provision of conditions for normal


It is the process of enabling
mental and physical functioning of the human
people to increase control over,
being individually and in the group.
and to improve health
• Immunization and seroprophylaxis
• Health education • chemoprophylaxis
• Environmental modifications • Use of specific nutrients or supplementations
• Nutritional interventions • Protection against occupational hazards
• Life style and behavioral • Safety of drugs and foods
changes • Control of environmental hazards, e.g. air
pollution

Approaches for Primary Prevention


• The WHO has recommended the following approaches for the primary
prevention of chronic diseases where the risk factors are established: –
a. Population (mass) strategy
b. High -risk strategy

Population (mass) strategy


• “Population strategy" is directed at the whole population irrespective of
individual risk levels.
• For example, studies have shown that even a small reduction in the average
blood pressure or serum cholesterol of a population would produce a large
reduction in the incidence of cardiovascular disease
• The population approach is directed towards socio-economic, behavioral and
lifestyle changes
High -risk strategy
• The high -risk strategy aims to bring preventive care to individuals at special risk.
• This requires detection of individuals at high risk by the optimum use of clinical
methods.

Secondary prevention
• It is defined as “ action which halts the progress of a disease at its incipient
stage and prevents complications.”

• The specific interventions are: early diagnosis (e.g. screening tests, and case
finding programs) and adequate treatment.

• Secondary prevention attempts to arrest the disease process, restore health


by seeking out unrecognized disease and treating it before irreversible
pathological changes take place, and reverse communicability of infectious
diseases.

• It thus protects others from in the community from acquiring the infection and
thus provide at once secondary prevention for the infected ones and primary
prevention for their potential contacts.

Early diagnosis and treatment

• WHO Expert Committee in 1973 defined early detection of health


disorders as “ the detection of disturbances of homoeostatic and
compensatory mechanism while biochemical, morphological and functional
changes are still reversible.”

• The earlier the disease is diagnosed, and treated the better it is for
prognosis of the case and for the prevention of the occurrence of other
secondary cases.

Advantages
• Important in reducing the high mortality and
morbidity of certain diseases like hypertension.

Disadvantages
• Expensive
• Patient is already subjected to pain and
suffering and the community to loss of
productivity

Tertiary prevention
• It is used when the disease process has advanced beyond its early stages.

• It is defined as “all the measures available to reduce or limit impairments and


disabilities, and to promote the patients’ adjustment to irremediable conditions.”

• Intervention that should be accomplished in the stage of tertiary prevention are


disability limitation, and rehabilitation.

Disability limitation

Disease

Impairment

Disability

Handicap

Impairment
• Impairment is “any loss or abnormality of psychological, physiological or
anatomical structure or function.”
Disability
• Disability is “any restriction or lack of ability to perform an activity in the
manner or within the range considered normal for the human being.

Rehabilitation

• Rehabilitation is “ the combined and coordinated use of medical,


social, educational, and vocational measures for training and retraining
the individual to the highest possible level of functional ability.”

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