PRIMARY, SECONDARY, TERTIARY PREVENTION

That’s a very good question because it helps to clarify the differences between the various levels of prevention and early diagnosis and the screening which many people still confuse with primary prevention, often deluding themselves that they can avoid the onset of a dreaded disease, like cancer, through a simple examination.

• Primary prevention seeks to prevent a disease from occurring (i.e. to reduce the incidence) for example by increasing the body’s defenses, eliminating the causal factors of the disease, selecting and treating conditions of risk, for example with the use of a vaccination or with advice on how to change your lifestyle.
• Secondary prevention concerns clinically healthy individuals with biological damage in progress and aims to heal the lesion before it can evolve into full-blown disease (this applies to cancer in particular).
• Early diagnosis concerns individuals at the very earliest stage of the disease so as to be able to intervene with appropriate treatment and increase life expectancy/ reduce mortality, despite there being no guarantees of being cured.

In fact, throughout their lives the individuals will have to undergo check-ups aimed at immediately intervening in the case of relapses.

• Secondary prevention and early diagnosis are achieved through adequate screening programs.
• Tertiary prevention lastly concerns the prevention of relapses, with the aim of reintegrating the patient in the family and social context as well as possible.

To be even clearer let’s take as an example, the prevention of HPV-related cervical cancer.

**The development of the nonavalent vaccine represents an important advance in the primary prevention of HPV-related disease.