What diseases does general internal medicine treat

We all know that internal medicine is generally used to treat certain diseases in the body, which are diseases that can be treated with drugs, while surgery is generally used to perform operations on patients. Surgeons generally go in and out of the operating room frequently, but some diseases also require a combination of internal and external medicine to be treated. So what diseases does general internal medicine mainly treat? Let me give you a detailed introduction below.

For non-mechanical damage to thoracic and abdominal organs, please consult an internal medicine doctor. For mechanical damage to muscles, bones, and ligaments, and wound infections, please consult a surgeon.

Some surgical diseases do not require surgical treatment if they have not developed to a certain extent. Some medical diseases may also become surgical diseases as the disease progresses. Be sure to seek medical treatment in a timely manner.

From a historical perspective, the earliest surgery could only deal with some external diseases of the body, such as some common boils, carbuncles, skin lumps, and some simple surgeries, so it was called surgery in ancient China. Of course, there are legends in history that Hua Tuo used Ma Fei San to anesthetize patients and perform craniotomy. This is just a legend, so just listen to it. From the perspective of modern medicine, it is simply impossible. First of all, the understanding of anatomy at that time was far from sufficient, and secondly there were issues of aseptic operation and infection. In the West, the early development of surgery was the same. Four or five hundred years ago in the West, surgery was not a specialized profession at all, but was performed by barbers, who could only deal with some simple skin surface problems. Of course, later with the development of Western anatomy, anesthesiology, chemistry and microbiology, surgery gradually matured in Western medicine.

The word for surgery in English: SURGERY, means "the technique of the hands". This shows that an important feature of surgery is hands-on operation. Of course, with the development of modern medicine today, the boundary between internal medicine and surgery has become increasingly blurred, and many overlaps have emerged. The current classification is that all diseases that require surgical treatment are classified as surgery, and all diseases that do not require surgical treatment are classified as internal medicine.

Of course, there are many diseases that require consultation from different departments at different times. For example, for coronary heart disease, some people can solve the problem by taking medication, some people need interventional treatment, and some people need surgery. Therefore, this requires collaboration between departments, and mutual understanding and learning. The interventional treatment mentioned here is actually an interdisciplinary subject between internal medicine, surgery and radiology. Currently, some medical fields have specialized interventional departments, some are classified as a group of radiology departments, some are classified as internal medicine, such as cardiac intervention, and some are classified as surgery, such as neurointerventional treatment. There is no clear regulation for this division, but it is gradually formed according to the habits of different hospitals in different countries and regions.