medicine Medicine is the science and Praxis (process), practice of caring for patients, managing the Medical diagnosis, diagnosis, prognosis, Preventive medicine, prevention, therapy, treatment, Palliative care, palliation of their injury or disease, ...

, describing a

disease A disease is a particular abnormal condition that adversely affects the structure or function (biology), function of all or part of an organism and is not immediately due to any external injury. Diseases are often known to be medical condi ...

as acute denotes that it is of recent onset; it occasionally denotes a short duration. The quantification of how much time constitutes "short" and "recent" varies by disease and by context, but the core denotation of "acute" is always qualitatively in contrast with " chronic", which denotes long-lasting disease (for example, in acute leukaemia and chronic leukaemia). In the context of the

mass noun In linguistics, a mass noun, uncountable noun, non-count noun, uncount noun, or just uncountable, is a noun with the syntactic property that any quantity of it is treated as an undifferentiated unit, rather than as something with discrete eleme ...

"acute disease", it refers to the acute phase (that is, a short course) of any disease entity. For example, in an article on ulcerative

enteritis Enteritis is inflammation of the small intestine. It is most commonly caused by food or drink contaminated with pathogenic microbes,Dugdale, David C., IIII, and George F Longretc"Enteritis" MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia, 18 October 2008. Acces ...

poultry Poultry () are domesticated birds kept by humans for the purpose of harvesting animal products such as meat, Eggs as food, eggs or feathers. The practice of animal husbandry, raising poultry is known as poultry farming. These birds are most typ ...

, the author says, "in acute disease there may be increased mortality without any obvious signs", referring to the acute form or phase of ulcerative enteritis.

Meaning variations

A mild stubbed toe is an acute injury. Similarly, many acute upper respiratory infections and

acute gastroenteritis Gastroenteritis, also known as infectious diarrhea, is an inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract including the stomach and intestine. Symptoms may include diarrhea, vomiting, and abdominal pain. Fever, lack of energy, and dehydration ma ...

cases in adults are mild and usually resolve within a few days or weeks. The term "acute" is also included in the definition of several diseases, such as

severe acute respiratory syndrome Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a viral respiratory disease of zoonotic origin caused by the virus SARS-CoV-1, the first identified strain of the SARS-related coronavirus. The first known cases occurred in November 2002, and the sy ...

, acute leukaemia,

acute myocardial infarction A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when blood flow decreases or stops in one of the coronary arteries of the heart, causing infarction (tissue death) to the heart muscle. The most common symptom is retr ...

, and acute hepatitis. This is often to distinguish diseases from their chronic forms, such as chronic leukaemia, or to highlight the sudden onset of the disease, such as acute myocardial infarct.

Related terminology

Related terms include:

Acute care

Acute care Acute care is a branch of secondary health care where a patient receives active but short-term treatment for a severe injury or episode of illness, an urgent medical condition, or during recovery from surgery.Alberta Health ServicesAcute care.Acce ...

is the early and specialist management of adult patients who have a wide range of medical conditions requiring urgent or

emergency An emergency is an urgent, unexpected, and usually dangerous situation that poses an immediate risk to health, life, property, or environment and requires immediate action. Most emergencies require urgent intervention to prevent a worsening ...

care usually within 48 hours of admission or referral from other specialties. Acute hospitals are those intended for short-term medical and/or surgical treatment and care which is a medical speciality of

acute medicine Acute medicine, also known as acute internal medicine (AIM), is a specialty within internal medicine concerned with the immediate and early specialist management of adult patients with a wide range of medical conditions who present in hospital as em ...

, as often

primary care Primary care is a model of health care that supports first-contact, accessible, continuous, comprehensive, and coordinated person-focused care. It aims to optimise population health and reduce disparities across the groups by ensuring equitable ...

is not positioned to assume this role.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Acute (Medicine) Medical terminology Pain Human diseases and disorders