difference between acute and chronic desease answer in brief
Answers
Ans= Acute diseases are the diseases that affects an individual for short span of time. For example, typhoid, cold, cough etc. Chronic diseases are the diseases that persist for a long period of time. They develop over a time and does not appear suddenly.
Answer:
General Definitions
Most illnesses can be categorized as acute or chronic. These terms can suggest the types of treatment required, how long treatment can be expected to last, and if treatment is appropriate.
Acute
Symptoms develop quickly
Expected to be brief; typically resolves in less than six months
Chronic
Symptoms have a slow onset and can worsen over time
Persists beyond six months
Acute does not mean new, although many newly diagnosed diseases present with acute symptoms. Nor does it mean that symptoms are severe. It simply means that symptoms have developed quickly and that some sort of medical intervention is needed.
Similarly, chronic should not be construed to mean fatal or something that will inherently shorten your life. It simply indicates that the condition is not curable. Chronic conditions can often be managed (like diabetes or high blood pressure).
A newly diagnosed illness can also be labeled chronic if there is no expectation of a cure; arthritis is one such example. Some extend the definition to include developmental, functional, or visual disabilities that require ongoing care or management.
Differences in Acute and Subacute Symptoms
Phases of Illness
An acute or chronic diagnosis is not necessarily fixed. An acute condition can sometimes become chronic, while a chronic condition may suddenly present with acute symptoms.
Certain infections, for example, will progress from an acute phase (in which symptoms appear and resolve after the initial exposure) to a chronic phase (in which the infection persists, but progresses less aggressively).
The chronic infection may lie dormant for years in a latent state, only to manifest with new and typically severe acute complications.1
Syphilis and hepatitis C are two such examples. Both will typically present with acute symptoms that spontaneously disappear, suggesting that the infections have cleared.
However, if left untreated, the infections can progress silently and emerge years later with severe complications like tertiary syphilis or liver failure, respectively.
The same can occur with non-infectious disorders like rheumatoid arthritis or psoriasis. Both are considered chronic in that they cannot be cured but can be managed with proper care and treatment.
Even so, the diseases can have episodic flares in which acute symptoms spontaneously develop and disappear.
Most, but not all, chronic diseases will lead to an acute event if left untreated. For example, atherosclerosis can lead to a heart attack or stroke if steps aren't taken to reduce arterial plaque build-up or reduce blood pressure.
With early diagnosis and treatment, some chronic disorders may remain subclinical (without readily observed symptoms) and never manifest acutely. These include infections like HIV or conditions like hypercholesterolemia (high cholesterol), which are often detected early and treated before any symptoms emerge.
Where Definitions Fall Short
As tidy as the definitions may seem—six months or more for chronic versus less than six months for acute—these timeframes in no way suggest what you may be faced with if diagnosed with an acute or chronic illness.
After all, an acute bout of the flu does not compare to an acute hepatitis C infection. Neither does HIV (a chronic infection that can be controlled over a lifetime with antiretroviral drugs) compare to multiple sclerosis (a chronic illness that invariably progresses despite treatment).
In the end, labeling an illness as acute or chronic cannot describe the nature of a disease, nor predict outcomes.
This non-specificity of definitions not only affects doctors and patients but also researchers who look for concise ways to evaluate the course of a disease. Thresholds are frequently changed from six months to three months or extended to a year or more, which only adds to confusion.
Even pubic health authorities aren't immune to these discrepancies. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), for instance, lists 20 diseases as chronic2 —including stroke, autism, and cancer—while the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMMS) lists 19, many of which are different from the HS.