[Morbidity in primary health care: patients versus visits]

The introduction of the Family and Community Medicine specialist in Spain implied the beginning of an epidemiological approach in the activities of primary care, and the publication of the first studies on cared morbidity. Variations in tolerance threshold to illness by patients, differences in perception of health problems by physicians, the lack of a consensus on the definition of events that should be registered, together with the lack of a census of the eligible population are important problems for the development of such studies. The majority of studies published in our country have not overcome all these problems in an acceptable way.