[The management of the chronic patient: explanatory models in comparison.]

The prevalence of chronic diseases represents a challenge for public health systems, which must cope with this phenomenon by reorganizing primary care, improving integration with hospitals, and involving those patients with one or more chronic conditions in their own care. The article proposes the categories of medical anthropology as an interpretative key to chronicity, promoting the realignment of the patient's explanatory models about disease with respect the models pertaining to medical knowledge and medical practices. In particular, the concept of risk plays a key role, which mainly concerns the asymptomatic phase of chronic cardio-cerebro-vascular and metabolic diseases and which must inspire educational and health literacy interventions to improve compliance and effectiveness of care.