Comorbidity and multimorbidity in medicine today: challenges and opportunities for bringing separated branches of medicine closer to each other

Abstract

Comorbidity and multimorbidity represent one of the greatest chalenge to academic medicine. Many disorders are often comorbidly expressed in diverse combinations. In clinical practice comorbidity and multimorbidity are underrecognized, underdiagnosed, underestimated and undertreated. So that one can speak about comorbidity and multimorbidity anosognosia. Comorbidities and multimorbidities are indifferent to medical specializations, so the integrative and complementary medicine is an imperative in the both education and practice. Shifting the paradigm from vertical/mono-morbid interventions to comorbidity and multimorbidity approaches enhances effectiveness and efficiency of human resources utilization. Comorbidity and multimorbidity studies have been expected to be an impetus to research on the validity of current diagnostic systems as well as on establishing more effective and efficient treatment including individualized and personalized pharmacotherapy.