Talk:Acute (medicine)

I see no reason to merge this with the Acute Medicine entry. They are talking about different (but releated) things. Alecclews (talk) 23:43, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Subacute needs it own page
The term subacute should not refer into this page, as this page does not address the subject of subacute medicine and subacute care. Pleasantville (talk) 14:52, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

Example for second paragraph (or, a reason to revise the first)
Acute hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a common use of "acute" that refers to the early phase of an infection that usually results in chronic infection (i.e. a more compelling example for the second paragraph, or indicating that the first paragraph should softened); btw, acute HCV is almost always asymptomatic. (disclosure: I am an author of the cited reference, hence this is only a suggestion.) &mdash; soupvector (talk) 22:24, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Recent onset vs short duration
I modified the primary meaning of acute to be of recent onset (as opposed to short [total] duration), as this is more consistent with clinical practice and OED. I think in the vast majority of cases (eg acute resp failure, acute MI, acute CVA, acute fracture, acute hepatitis, acute encephalopathy, ALL, AML),the term acute refers to diseases/symptoms that began recently and not necessarily to diseases that are expected to resolve shortly. Maybe an example of the latter (ie short duration diseases) is acute renal failure/AKI vs CKD, where in common medical usage, the idea is that AKIs are typically temporary. But even the formal definition of AKI per KDIGO really emphasizes how recently the Cr went up, not how short the expected duration of the disease is. Of course, the acute onset diseases are frequently shorter lasting than the ones with a slow onset. But the predominant meaning in medicine is recent onset. Mauvila (talk) 23:15, 7 May 2023 (UTC)