Natural history of disease

It constitutes the course of biological events that occurs during the development of the origin of the diseases[4] (etiologies) to its outcome, whether that be recovery, chronicity, or death.

In the pre-pathogenic period, the disease originates, but the patient does not yet present clinical symptoms or changes in his/her cells, tissues, or organs.

[citation needed] However, in degenerative and chronic diseases (like osteoarthritis and dementia), we refer to this phase as the latency period because it has a very slow evolution that can last months to years.

Additionally, this phase can be broken down into three different periods: The medical field has developed many different interventions to diagnose, prevent, treat, and rehabilitate the natural course of disease.

In artificially changing this evolution of disease, doctors hope to prevent the death of their patients by either curing them or reducing their long-term effects.

[citation needed] Primary prevention is a group of sanitary activities that are carried out by the community, government, and healthcare personnel before a particular disease appears.

[citation needed] Tertiary prevention also occurs when a patient avoids a new contagion as a result of knowledge that he/she gained from having a different illness in the past.

[citation needed] Quaternary prevention is the group of sanitary activities that mitigates or entirely bypasses the consequences of the health system's unnecessary or excessive interventions.

[citation needed] They are "the actions that are taken to identify patients at risk of overtreatment, to protect them from new medical interventions, and to suggest ethically acceptable alternatives."

[citation needed] Musculoskeletal pathologies such as osteoarthritis of the knee or shoulder (rotator cuff) tendinopathy are aspects of normal human aging.