Wiki How to determine chronic vs. acute

[shayna5184]

When determining if an illness is chronic vs. acute is it based off of how long the patient has had the condition or is it based on if the condition is considered a chronic or acute condition?
example: a patient has actinic keratosis which happens with sun exposure throughout life But if it’s only been present on the patient for a week would that be considered chronic or acute?

 

[SharonCollachi]

Lifetime sun exposure would not make the condition chronic or acute - it would have no effect on the terminology.

Interesting article here on the term "chronic": https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4969287/

The CDC does not define chronic based on the duration of the symptoms or of the disease, but on whether the condition can be cured. If a condition is not curable, it is generally considered chronic. Is AK curable? Do you have patients that have the lesions removed and then they don't return?

In our office, we define chronic pain (we're pain management) as pain that lasts for 3 months or more. Some pain is curable, so some pain is acute.

Anyway, lots of interesting info in that article.

 

[jeskla]

AMA defines chronic as : A problem with an expected duration of at least a year or until the death of the patient.

https://www.ama-assn.org/system/files/2019-06/cpt-office-prolonged-svs-code-changes.pdf