A typology of clinical conditions

Abstract

In the philosophy of medicine, great attention has been paid to defining disease, yet less attention has been paid to the classification of clinical conditions. These include conditions that look like diseases but are not; conditions that are diseases but that (currently) have no diagnostic criteria; and other types, including those relating to risk for disease. I present a typology of clinical conditions by examining factors important for characterizing clinical conditions. By attending to the types of clinical conditions possible on the basis of these key factors (symptomaticity, dysfunction, and the meeting of diagnostic criteria), I draw attention to how diseases and other clinical conditions as currently classified can be better categorized, highlighting the issues pertaining to certain typology categories. Through detailed analysis of a wide variety of clinical examples, including Alzheimer disease as a test case, I show how nosology, research, and decisions about diagnostic criteria should include normative as well as naturalistically describable factors.