Editorial
Misuse of "coronary heart disease"
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Precision and non-ambiguity are paramount adjuncts of word usage and scientific communication, particularly when the term coronary heart disease (CHD) is in common use epidemiologically and as an end point in clinical trials. CHD, as non-sensical as "femoral leg disease", may have led non-medical epidemiologists to consider it a specific disease when this is pathologically false.
"Disease" can be used in a general sense to indicate a diseased
state, the antithesis of health. "A disease" should signify a
specific disease entity (such as atherosclerosis) and should not be
used loosely in reference to symptoms (angina pectoris, headache),
signs (fever, hypertension), laboratory findings
(hypercholesterolaemia), non-specific complications (embolism,
haemorrhage, ischaemia, necrosis), pathological lesions (gangrene,
aneurysm, infarct, haematoma), abnormal functional states (obstructive
lung disease) or collective terms for pathological states or diseases
related to an organ (renal disease, cerebrovascular disease, CHD). Each exclusion is a manifestation of many specific diseases varying aetiologically and
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