Typing It All Together

Comorbidity is common, affecting one-third or more of the global population; and recent co-prevalence estimates suggest that its presence is increasing. It is associated with substantial chronic illness burden, disability, high mortality, and high ongoing costs to the individual and the community, reflecting its substantial impact within and beyond the health care system. Thus, unravelling the causes of comorbidity currently ranks among the top priorities in clinical practice. However, there are currently few protocols and clinical practice guidelines that can be used to assist clinicians in treating comorbid conditions in a coordinated way. Instead, the guidelines and protocols have tended to focus on single disorders and they generally fail to take comorbidities into account. This has resulted in the comorbid disorders being treated as if they are isolated clinical entities, with each condition managed separately, often by different clinicians. Therefore, there is a clear need to develop new clinical practice guidelines and therapeutic approaches that do take comorbidity into account; especially in patients with highly prevalent and highly comorbid disorders.