Difference Between Preventions, Treatments, and Cures
A prevention or preventive measure is a way to avoid an injury, sickness, or disease in the first place, and generally it will not help someone who is already ill (though there are exceptions). For instance, many babies in developed countries are given a polio vaccination soon after they are born, which prevents them from contracting polio. But the vaccination does not work on patients who already have polio. A treatment or cure is applied after a medical problem has already started.
A treatment treats a problem, and may lead to its cure, but treatments often ameliorate a problem only for as long as the treatment is continued, especially in chronic diseases. For example, there is no cure for AIDS, but treatments are available to slow down the harm done by HIV and delay the fatality of the disease. Treatments don't always work. For example, chemotherapy is a treatment for some types of cancer. In some cases, chemotherapy may cause a cure, but not in all cases for all cancers. When nothing can be done to stop or improve a medical condition, beyond efforts to make the patient more comfortable, the condition is said to be untreatable. Some untreatable conditions naturally resolve on their own; others do not.
Cures are a subset of treatments that reverse illnesses completely or end medical problems permanently. Many diseases that cannot be cured are still treatable.
Read more about this topic: Therapy
Famous quotes containing the words difference between, difference and/or cures:
“Man is the only animal that laughs or weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be. We weep at what thwarts or exceeds our desires in serious matters; we laugh at what only disappoints our expectations in trifles.”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)
“But that’s always the way; it don’t make no difference whether you do right or wrong, a person’s conscience ain’t got no sense, and just goes for him anyway.... It takes up more room than all the rest of a person’s insides, and yet ain’t no good, nohow. Tom Sawyer thinks the same.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“The sun of this month cures all.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)