Question

What is the most likely level of prevention below?

Removal of pre-cancerous lesions on the skin

a.	Tertiary Prevention
	b.	Secondary Prevention
	c.	None of the above
	d.	Primary Prevention

Answer 1

The correct answer would be (a) Tertiary prevention.

There are four levels of prevention: primary, secondary, tertiary, and primordial.

Primordial prevention: It includes prevention of a risk factor that can lead to the development of a disease. It includes individual and mass education.

Primary prevention: This includes the actions that can prevent a disease occurrence. It intervenes in the pre pathogenesis phase. It can be achieved by measures designed to achieve general health and well being.

Secondary prevention: This includes screening tests and case finding programs. Here early detection of disease is done.

Tertiary prevention: The disease process has already started and interventions are required to avoid further complications and morbidity.

Here 'removal of pre-cancerous cells' involves surgical interventions to avoid the complications related to cancer, hence it would be considered as 'tertiary prevention'.