Medical conditions

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Medical conditions are used to describe a patient's conditions in a hospital. These terms are most commonly used by the news media and are rarely used by doctors in their daily business, preferring to deal with medical problems in greater detail.

A common progression might look like this:

Critical condition: High risk of death within 24 hours
Serious condition: reduced risk of death within 24 hours, but requiring frequent observation
Stable condition: no major fluctuation in vital signs
Good condition: little significant injury; patient may be discharged shortly

However, a range of different terms are used, including things like, grave condition, extremely critical condition, critical but stable condition, serious but stable condition, satisfactory condition, fair condition, and others. Definition varies between hospitals, and it is even possible for a patient to be upgraded or downgraded simply by being moved from one place to another, with no change in actual physical state.