Medical conditions

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 without continuous intervention or life support
 * Serious condition : reduced risk of death within 24 hours, but requiring frequent observation
 * Fair 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, such as grave condition, extremely critical condition, critical but stable condition, serious but stable condition, satisfactory condition, and others. Typically, stable is not a condition on its own; it needs to be qualified with a true condition.

The use of such conditions in the U.S. media has increased since the passing of the HIPAA in 1996. Patient privacy has become more of a concern to doctors and hospitals, and they are less likely to release specific medical conditions, fearing litigious patients.

Definitions vary among 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. Furthermore, medical science is a highly complex discipline dealing with complicated and often overlapping threats to life and well-being. In the case of possibly life threatening illness, a patient may be treated by a dozen or more specialists, each with their area of medical expertise. It is to be expected that there will be a range of opinion concerning that patient's immediate condition.