Prevenção Quaternária e a Prescrição de Cloroquina e Hidroxicloroquina na COVID-19: vale a pena pecar pelo excesso?

Quaternary prevention: action taken to recognize people or populations at risk of overmedicalization and to protect them, suggesting scientifically and ethically acceptable procedures. In 2019, a disease classified as Coronavirus-Induced-Disease, responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, emerged in Wuhan. Lives are being cut short and the search for treatment is a global public health issue. In vitro, hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine inhibit this agent, so it was suggested that such drugs should be part of the early treatment. A review was performed in PubMed and LILACS databases and manual search of journals in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) and in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), under the terms: “hydroxychloroquine, chloroquine and COVID-19”,“Hydroxychloroquine, chloroquine and COVID-19” and “chloroquine and COVID-19”. The Exclusion Criteria: duplicate articles, hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine outside the context of COVID-19, other aspects of COVID-19 and magazines sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry. 115 articles were found in the databases after applying the exclusion criteria and 6 were selected for review. Other studies on quaternary prevention were researched in order to discuss the excess of medical intervention. There is still no ideal treatment to control the virus. It is up to the health professionals, in particular, the Family Practice Doctors, the critical thinking applied to all the results presented in the studies, no matter how attractive they may seem at first sight.