Preventive Medicine

Preventive medicine is the practice of medicine that detects and alters or ameliorates host susceptibility in a premorbid state (eg, immunization), risk factors for disease in a predisease state (eg, increased cholesterol level), and disease in the presymptomatic state (eg, in situ cervical cancer). Not all disease is preventable because not all risk factors (or all individuals at risk) are known, the cost of screening everyone is not feasible, barriers to medical access exist, interval disease occurs, characteristics of the target disease vary, and screening tests and treatments are imperfect.