All about comorbidity

What Is Comorbidity?

Comorbidity, basically, is a statedescribing that a single person is suffering from several differentmedical conditions simultaneously. However, there are variousvariants of comorbidity. Namely, while, originally, this conditionimplied that a person is suffering from several illnesses which areall independently affecting his/her organism, today a moreintertwined relationship is taken into consideration because today itis believed that there is a connection between each of the severaldiseases affecting a person. Moreover, these diseases are consideredto influence each other and, thereby, the main condition as well.

There are different tests which canclassify morbidity into different degrees and levels. This helps toestablish a hierarchy of diseases, knowing which one is the main oneand which diseases are secondary, tertiary etc. This also helps withnoticing which illness affects which etc. So, there is a list of allpossible conditions which can strike one in combination. Next to theconditions there are numbers classifying them in severity and thechance of one's demise due to the effects of it. This makes it easierfor the doctor to treat the patient since he/she knows if thecondition or conditions are severe and, based on this information, iscapable of leveling the aggressiveness of the treatment as well.There are several different tests which are all done in order for theresults to be as precise as possible.

Other Cases of Comorbidity

Comorbidity does not have to be presentsolely in medical aspects. Rather, people suffering frompsychological problems can also be affected by several diseases atonce, each, again, affecting the other one. Still, this does notalways have to be the case, since comorbidity in psychiatry maysimply mean that not all symptoms of a certain condition are presentin a person, or the symptoms of two different conditions areintertwined. Of course, proper diagnosis under these conditions isquite hard and it takes a lot of effort for one to preciselydistinguish the patient's psychological problems and separate them.Due to the fact that all these different combinations of psychiatricproblems are not prone to this kind of a distinction since these mayall create completely new syndromes and other illnesses, it is bestnot to use the term comorbidity for their occurrences.

All in all, comorbidity is oftenpresent in medicine as well as psychiatry. Moreover, by payingattention to the symptoms and classifying them adequately, doctorscan have greater insight into a person's condition and know how toreact better when it comes to treatment.