IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v29y1989i3p293-300.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Assumptions governing approaches to diagnosis and treatment

Author

Listed:
  • Aakster, Cor W.

Abstract

The article analyses two representative medical textbooks, one about regular or 'orthodox' medicine and the other about alternative or complementary medicine. The following dimensions of the disease-concept are discussed: definition, epidemiology, causation, natural history, pathology, clinical features, diagnostic procedures, treatment, effects, complications, rehabilitation, prognosis, prevention, doctor-patient relations, position of the patient, costs and burdens. Although the analysis is not yet complete, some general inferences may be drawn, i.e. the leading model of thinking in regular medicine may be termed 'classical' as opposed to that of complementary medicine, being more 'perspectivistic' in nature. Definitions of disease, as well as diagnostic procedures and therapeutic interventions are organ-specific in regular medicine, and whole-person oriented in complementary medicine. Complementary medicine pays more attention to developmental aspects in desease, the partnership of the patient, the long-term restoration of health, the avoidance of harmful side effects. Also, organisation of the care system is quite different for these types of medicine: being hospital-directed and highly differentiated in regular medicine, while the organisational model of complementary medicine is essentially of a home-centred, integrated type.

Suggested Citation

  • Aakster, Cor W., 1989. "Assumptions governing approaches to diagnosis and treatment," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 293-300, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:29:y:1989:i:3:p:293-300
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0277-9536(89)90277-3
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:29:y:1989:i:3:p:293-300. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.