The Character and Destination of Multimorbidity: Reflections for Classification

Abstract

Multimorbidity is the presence of two or more long-term health problems. It often involves the superposition of mental, cardiovascular, diabetes, cancer and respiratory diseases. Multimorbidity is now a widespread phenomenon that affects the health of populations around the world, with the greatest burden among people or disadvantaged subpopulations, as it has become a serious public health problem due to its negative consequences on quality of life, the greater tendency to disability and mortality, polypharmacy and cost of utilization of health services, and that gives rise to a considerable burden of care. Multimorbidity is not simply a problem of chronological aging, nor is it distributed randomly [1,2].