Prevalence of Chronic Diseases: in Defence of Epidemiological Craftsmanship in Family Medicine

Objective Describe the prevalence of chronic diseases in Family Medicine, and to assess the usefulness of these studies at this level of care. Methodology A cross-sectional study, from a secondary analysis of an existing dataset, was carried out in a Family Medicine office in Toledo, Spain. For each patient were collected the variables age, gender and chronic illness according WHO-ICD-10 groups. Results A sample of 300 patients was obtained, of which 129 were men (43%) and 171 women (57%), with 84 patients older than 65 years (28 %). The most prevalent WHO-ICD-10 groups were: Diseases of the circulatory system (43%), Diseases of the musculoskeletal system and connective tissue (36%), Mental and behavioral disorders (31%), Endocrine, nutritional and metabolic diseases (28%), Diseases of the respiratory system (20%), Diseases of the genitourinary system (20%), and Diseases of the digestive system (19%). The prevalence of chronic diseases increases with advancing age, to a peak in 55-64 years, to decrease slightly in the subsequent age groups, and predominate in women, which is reproduced in all the age groups, except for 65-74 years, where the percentage is slightly higher in males. 713 diseases were found in 300 patients, which mean 2.4 diseases per patient. The mean number of chronic diseases increases with age, from 1 disease per patient in the 15-34 years of age, up to 4.3 chronic diseases per patient in 75 years and over, and in total is slightly higher in women vs. men (2.5 vs. 2.2). Conclusions 1. Highlighting the high prevalence of Diseases of the circulatory system, followed by Diseases of the musculoskeletal system and Mental and behavioral disorders. 2. Multimorbidity is common in the general population. It increases steeply with older age, has different patterns in men and women. 3. Our method for determining chronic disease prevalence correlates with health surveys and may have higher reliability at a local level. Our findings can improve community health surveillance by identifying local variation of disease prevalence. This study is an argument in defence of craftsmanship intellectual and epidemiological in Family Medicine.