Physician-patient partnerships for lifelong health monitoring

Progress against disease has created in some parts of the world a situation in which people can expect good health into the eighth decade of life and beyond. Ideally that involves a physician-patient partnership for health maintenance, wherein a patient actively develops a life-style that is conducive to health. The scientific base for health maintenance has been growing through epidemiologic demonstration of the relationship between health and such living habits as smoking, diet, exercise and the use of alcohol, and the significance of blood pressure and other precursors of health effects that can be determined by physical examination.Lifelong health monitoring of patients by physicians builds on this scientific base for health maintenance, which merely extends the presently well-established schema for monitoring health during pregnancy and infancy. Public readiness for a health-oriented, in addition to a disease-oriented, medical service is growing.