Medical terminology is only at first glance difficult to understand. Often the names of any processes or methods are named literally or formed from several words characterizing them. An example of such a term is etiopathogenesis.
Definition
According to medical dictionaries, etiopathogenesis is a combination of theoretical knowledge available to doctors and data from studies on the causes of the onset of the disease and the mechanism of its development. This method is not particularly popular among medical workers in view of the fact that it implies a merger of causes and effects together.
What does it mean?
The term was formed by a combination of three Greek words. Two of them form a "pathogenesis":
- πάθος - disease or suffering;
- γένεσις - origin or origin.
The third word, αἰτία, translates as “cause”. Thus, etiopathogenesis is the name of a medical method for studying pathologies that occur in the human body, literally corresponding to its own essence.
What does this concept include?
Like the meaning of the concept of “etiopathogenesis” itself, the classification of the method is extremely simple. It includes three fundamental variants of the combination of etiology and pathogenic process, which determine the specificity of the disease in a single case. That is, etiopathogenesis is a state of the ratio of the pathogen factor and the disease process caused by it.
The main types of correlation are three:
- The first is that the factor that stimulates pathogenesis can disappear without a trace. An example of such a ratio of the disease process and its etiological cause is any burn.
- The second option implies the coexistence within the human body of the cause of the disease and the pathogenic process. An example of this is any infection.
- The third option, in which there may be a relationship between the cause of the disease and its course, is the periodic persistence of the pathogen. An example of this is malaria.
Other components
Etiopathogenesis is a concept that includes not only the main types of correlation of the cause of an ailment with its development, but also such moments as a mechanism, period and phenomenon. They have a narrower meaning.
A period is a certain stage during a disease. At various stages, it can both remain the original, and etiopathogenesis will change. The symptomatology observed by doctors is the main factor determining the period.
The main stages of the state of the disease:
- incubation;
- latent;
- premonitory;
- expressed.
Symptoms characteristic of individual periods can be combined at the time of the flow of the disease from one to another.
The mechanisms are non-specific and specific. In the first case, these are natural reactions for the human body that have developed during evolutionary development and occur on the presence of a pathogenic pathogen. Specific, respectively, depend on the etiology of a particular disease. They are the factor that determines the characteristics characteristic of a particular disease. They also make possible the diagnosis of pathology.
The reactions of certain body systems also become mechanisms of etiopathogenesis. For example, endocrine or nervous.
And the phenomena are divided into general and local. As a rule, they are interconnected and are present in the general pathogenesis together. One type of phenomena becomes primary and entails the second. An example of when local phenomena first occur is any skin damage. In the absence of wound treatment, general phenomena develop, in this example, inflammation in the tissues. A clear example of the inverse relationship is the occurrence of any pathologies against the background of the disease. Diabetes mellitus leads to the development of a whole galaxy of local phenomena - furunculosis, nephropathy and others.