Minimally disruptive medicine is an approach to patient care in chronic illness proposed by Carl R May, Victor Montori, and Frances Mair.
[1] In a 2009 article in the British Medical Journal they argued that the burden of illness (the pathophysiological and psychosocial impact of disease on the sufferer) has its counterpart in the burden of treatment (the workload delegated to the patient by health professionals, which may include self care and self-monitoring, managing therapeutic regimens, organizing doctors’ visits, tests, and insurance).
As medical responses to illness have become more sophisticated, the burden of treatment has grown, and includes increasingly complex techniques and health technologies (such as telecare) that must be routinely incorporated in everyday life by their users.
Overburdening leads, May, Montori and Mair argued, to structurally induced non-compliance with treatment, in which it becomes progressively more difficult for patients – especially older patients with multiple long-term conditions – to meet the demands that therapeutic regimens place upon them.
Treatment burden is associated, independently of illnesses, with adherence to therapeutic care [9] and could affect hospitalization and survival rates.