Women's Diseases

Gyneacological Disease. How does the body react to illness?

Modern medicine seeks to determine the disease process (pathology) accounting for a patient's symptoms. Once the disease process has been identified, treatment can focus on counter measures, which have proven benefit (evidence based -Q33.22).Table 3. 1 indicates the main groups of disease causation. This has been applied to the potential causes of recurrent miscarriage(recurrent miscarriage).

Table 3. 1 (Click on the appropriate Question Number)

DISEASE PROCESS	General Example	Gynaecological Example
CONGENITAL	Hole in the heart	Absent uterus
TRAUMA	Road traffic accident	Pelvic floor injury during childbirth
INFLAMMATION	Influenza	Pelvic infection
metaBOLIC	Malnutrition	Absent periods due to malnutrition
HORMONAL	Diabetes	Menopause
AUTOIMMUNE	Rheumatic Disease	Recurrent miscarriage
TUMOUR	Lung cancer	Fibroid / Cancer of cervix
AGEING	Osteoarthritis	Menopausal vaginal symptoms
PSYCHOLOGICAL	Depression	Premenstrual tension

frequently, a patient has two or more unrelated problems. You could, for example, have heavy periods and an abnormal cervical smear result. Sometimes there may be a combination of related processes: a lady may feel tired and lethargic due to anaemia(Q 24.10) resulting from heavy periods associated with fibroids (Q 23.14) and, as a result of these problems, she may feel depressed.

The medical profession recognises that there may be a collection of inter-related problems. The concept that a patient should be treated as a whole person rather than as a disease process is part of the basic training of doctors although the term holistic approach seems to have been adopted by those who advocate alternative medicine to suggest that they invented the idea.