Acute medical conditions are sudden and short-lived, while chronic conditions last a long time and develop slowly. Some diseases can start as acute and become chronic, and chronic conditions can be caused by an initial acute injury. Good medical intervention can prevent acute conditions from becoming chronic.
There is some misunderstanding when doctors or laypeople use the term acute or chronic medical condition. This has a lot to do with the fact that sometimes people refer to themselves as having acute pain, and acute can be described as severe, in some cases. The problem is that many people who have a chronic condition can be in a lot of pain, so the differences need to be understood more fully.
In essence, an acute medical condition is normally short-lived with sudden onset. If you cut yourself or catch a cold, these are considered acute conditions. They usually occur without warning.
In contrast, the chronic medical condition is one that lasts a long time and often develops slowly. If you have chronic pain, it means you have been in pain for a long time. If you have a chronic condition, it could be one that lasts a lifetime. Most autoimmune diseases such as HIV, Lupus or Hashimoto’s disease are characterized as chronic, while the common cold or flu are acute. There is an end in sight and you will recover. This does not mean that this type of condition is necessarily permanent. Many people recover from a chronic condition, but it may take longer than it would to recover from an acute illness.
Acute can also refer to the early stage of a disease or its onset of symptoms. Also some conditions are chronic, although sometimes there is a remission of symptoms. For example, you may start to get migraines. Even if there were days when you don’t have migraines, but still have them constantly, you would have chronic migraines, because the symptoms keep coming up. Alternatively, you may have an occasional migraine or only have one, in which case the condition would be considered acute.
Some diseases can start as acute medical conditions and become chronic. Scarlet fever, caused by the strep virus, if not treated with antibiotics can create poor heart function by creating bacterial endocarditis, bacterial cells that grow inside the heart valves. Before the advent of antibiotics, many people died years after getting scarlet fever from this type of infection. What began as acute scarlet fever has become a chronic condition.
An acute injury can also cause a chronic condition. If you’ve injured your back and treatment leaves you with residual pain, many months after the injury, you’ve developed chronic medical pain. Another type of chronic medical condition caused by an initial acute injury is residual paralysis after an accident. What starts as acute becomes chronic.
With good medical intervention, many acute conditions never become chronic medical conditions. In some cases, however, the disease or injury is so serious that it cannot be treated or fully addressed with medical care. Chronic and incurable diseases or injuries are alleviated, given the treatments possible to help patients live as normal a life as possible.
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