Academic pathophysiology is a medical subfield within pathology. It deals with the study of pathologically altered bodily functions (pathology) as well as the changes in the body (physiology) of a living being. The medical term goes back to the Greek language. Pathos means suffering and physis means body and nature.
What is pathophysiology?
Pathophysiology deals with the study of pathologically altered bodily functions (pathology) as well as the changes in the body (physiology) of a living being. Pathophysiology, or pathological physiology, focuses on the pathological changes and the resulting dysfunctions of the human organism. When a person falls ill, his body no longer functions fully, deviating from its regular, healthy mechanism. Pathogenesis determines how the diseased body functions and which functional mechanisms lead to the pathological changes. Medicine accepts that even under these pathologically altered conditions, the body has a physiologically meaningful normal function that maintains physiological balance (homeostasis). Diagnostics assumes a gapless connection between a healthy and a diseased condition, because despite the disease, the body still allows normal life processes of the healthy, non-diseased body parts and organs. For this reason, physicians do not make a strict distinction between sick and healthy, since even a sick patient regularly exhibits normal life processes and healthy body functions. Medical subfields include autonomic physiology, cardiovascular physiology, neurophysiology, sensory physiology, and cellular physiology.
Treatments and therapies
Physiology deals with the natural biochemical and biophysical functioning of the organism and its natural life processes. It is only when this intact biorhythm and related functions become unbalanced due to disease that pathophysiology comes into play. Pathology is the study of disease and its investigation. It deals with the abnormal conditions and processes of living beings and their causes. Pathophysiology is a combination of these two medical subfields, dealing with the natural interrelationships between the body and its diseases. The course of a disease process is called etiology. In medical circles, physiology is considered the “pinnacle of natural science,” presumably because it deals with the so-called “crown of creation,” the human being. Pathophysiology is used in all medical subfields because pathological changes can occur throughout the body. The attending physicians deal with the central issues of the human body and its pathological dysfunctions. Only when the pathologist gains a comprehensive understanding of the pathophysiological relationships of his patient’s disease can he initiate appropriate diagnoses, therapies and rehabilitation measures. Pathophysiology is the key to understanding clinical pathogenesis and disease development. Human physicians deal with the individual clinical disease patterns and determine even difficult correlations in this way. The fundamentals of pathophysiology include health, disease, aging, death, features of brain death, chronic responses to dehydration states, and the basic mechanisms of organ, organ system, and cellular disorders. In this area, disorders of electrolyte, as well as acid-base balance, vegetative and psychosomatic disorders are treated. In the field of clinical pathophysiology, all disorders related to diseases and dysfunctions of kidneys, water balance, respiration, digestion, metabolism, as well as heart and brain diseases are treated. The physicians treat conditions and diseases such as renal failure, systemic diseases, respiratory insufficiency, pulmonary embolism, pneumothorax, emphysema, gastric mobility disorders, oral cavity dysfunction, intestinal mobility disorders and diseases, liver disorders, acute metabolic derangements, nervous system and sensorimotor disorders, metabolic dysfunctions, diabetes, strokes, and all disorders and diseases associated with malignant brain activity.
Research Methods
Pathophysiology provides human physicians with an optimal understanding of the intricate interrelationships of the human body with its clinical pathogenesis and disease development. In summary, a deep understanding of pathophysiology is the best way into clinical practice and treatment of all types of diseases. The pathogenesis of the disease conditions treated is of great importance to medical practitioners in terms of diagnosis, therapy and follow-up. Pathophysiology has the main goal of promoting the patients’ compensatory abilities. Pathological physiology, as a tool for recognizing and classifying diseases and pathological changes in the human organism, has two types of pathogenesis. Formal pathogenesis, which deals with the “how” and asks about the functional and structural course of disease, and causal pathogenesis, which asks about the “why” and explores the cause of the disease at hand. It deals with the relationship between noxious agent (cause of disease) and the patient’s disposition to actually become ill. If a patient falls ill with the flu, the virus is the cause (etiology). The overall situation the patient is in before getting sick due to contact with the virus is the cause and disposition that made the flu illness possible in the first place (causal pathogenesis). The inflammatory processes, rhinitis, fever, and all other accompanying symptoms of influenza represent the disease process itself (functional pathogenesis). Pathologists understand the functioning and structure of all organs, the development of functional disorders and disease patterns in all areas of the human body. In addition to biological factors, physicians increasingly focus on psycho-social factors, which play a significant role in the development of disease patterns. The problem of pathophysiology consists in the fact that diseases are regularly temporal, while scientific and medical observations provide only snapshots and on this basis identify the interrelationships of the disease process and the resulting dysfunctions in the human body. Figuratively speaking, pathologists capture many snapshots and assemble them into an overall picture, like a motion picture film, to reconstruct the course of disease.
