There are some misunderstandings when doctors or lay people use the term acute or chronic medical condition. This has a lot to do with the fact that people sometimes refer to themselves as acute pain, and acute can be defined as severe, in some cases. The problem is that many people who have a chronic medical condition may be in severe pain, so the differences need to be better understood.
Essentially, an acute medical condition is one that is typically brief with sudden onset. If you cut yourself or catch a cold, they are considered acute conditions. They usually occur without warning.
In contrast, a chronic medical condition is one that lasts a long time and often develops slowly. If you have chronic pain, it means that you are in pain for a long period of time. If you have a chronic medical condition, it may be one that lasts a lifetime. Most autoimmune diseases like HIV, lupus, or Hashimoto's disease are characterized as chronic, while the average cold or flu is acute. There is an end in sight and you will recover. This does not mean that a chronic medical condition is necessarily lifelong. Many people recover from a chronic medical condition, but it may take longer than it would to recover from an acute illness.
Acute can also refer to the first stage of a disease, or its onset of symptoms. Also, some conditions are chronic, even if symptoms sometimes regress. For example, you may start having migraines. Even if there were days when you don't have migraines, but you continue to suffer from them constantly, you would be suffering from chronic migraines, because the symptoms keep coming back. Alternatively, you may have an occasional migraine, or just one, in which case the condition would be considered acute.
Some illnesses can start as acute medical conditions and lead to a chronic medical condition. Scarlet fever, caused by the strep virus, when not treated with antibiotics can create poor heart function by creating bacterial endocarditis, bacterial cells that grow inside the heart valves. Before the advent of antibiotics, many people died years after getting scarlet fever from this type of infection. What started as acute scarlet fever turned into a chronic condition.
An acute injury can also cause a chronic condition. If you have injured your back and treatment leaves you with residual pain, many months after the injury, you have developed chronic medical pain. Another type of chronic medical condition caused by an initial acute injury is residual paralysis after an accident. What begins as acute becomes chronic.
With good medical intervention, many acute conditions never become chronic medical conditions. However, in some cases, the illness or injury is so severe that it cannot be completely cured or treated with medical care. Chronic and incurable illnesses or injuries are palliated, given as much care as possible to help patients live as normal a life as possible.