No one wants to find themselves in a grave situation or suffering from a grave condition.
The term “grave” often gets thrown around in Hollywood and real life.
For example, in the healthcare industry, doctors might use the word to describe a patient’s condition.
In Hollywood, heroes will state that the situation looks grave.
If you’re not sure what grave means in such contexts, here’s what you need to know.
What Does Grave Condition Mean?
According to a medical dictionary, grave refers to an individual who has symptoms that are dangerous.
Relating this to a condition, a grave condition means that an individual has some sort of disease, illness, or wound that is dangerous to their health.
In most cases, they are not expected to recover from the disease, illness, or wound.
In layman’s terms, a grave condition means that someone is at death’s door.
What Are Some Grave Illnesses?
If you were recently diagnosed with an illness, you may wonder if you have a grave condition.
Being ill doesn’t always mean you’re in a grave situation or suffering from a grave condition.
That’s because most illnesses have some form of treatment or prevention.
However, there are some illnesses that doctors consider grave because the chances of surviving are small, or at the very least, treatment for it isn’t expected to work well.
Here are some illnesses that doctors might consider grave.
1. Stroke
A stroke occurs when the blood supply to your brain becomes blocked or reduced.
A common reason behind a lack of blood supply to your brain is when a blood vessel gets blocked or leaks.
It’s not unlike when you suffer from a heart attack.
When your heart is unable to get oxygen via blood, it goes into cardiac arrest.
It does so because a vein is usually blocked by plaque.
When this occurs in your brain, the brain is no longer able to get the oxygen it needs to survive.
It immediately starts to die.
The result is a stroke.
According to Healthline, strokes are the third leading cause of death in women and the fifth leading cause of death in men.
The problem with having a stroke is that once you have one, it’s not uncommon to have another.
If you have another stroke within the first 30 days, one out of eight strokes is fatal.
Within the same year, one in four strokes is fatal.
If someone suffers from a stroke, they’re in grave condition.
They need immediate help and must go to an Emergency Room.
Even if they survive the stroke, their quality of life is likely reduced.
They may come out of it with a disability that’s difficult to recover from.
Since having one stroke can often lead to more strokes, they may also only be living on borrowed time before the next one strikes.
2. COPD
COPD, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, on its own isn’t too grave.
However, it can become grave.
According to the Mayo Clinic, COPD is a progressive disease.
This means it becomes worse as time goes on.
While there are medications and treatments available to help reduce the symptoms of COPD, there is no cure.
As such, a full recovery, in most cases, isn’t likely.
The problem with COPD is when it mixes with other illnesses like the flu or bronchitis.
Since COPD affects the lungs, making it difficult to breathe, these added illnesses only make breathing that much more difficult.
If someone has COPD and then gets bronchitis, for example, they may not be able to breathe at all.
They’re in a grave situation because, without immediate medical help, they could die.
The cause of COPD can also determine whether the illness becomes grave or not.
For example, if someone has COPD as a result of smoking, they might also develop emphysema.
Emphysema is when small passageways on the lungs slowly get destroyed over time.
This problem worsens the more you breathe in the harmful chemicals in cigarette smoke as well as other harmful chemicals in the air or particulates in the air.
At some point, your lungs are going to become damaged to the point where they no longer work.
If you can’t get a lung transfer, then your condition is very grave.
3. Lung Cancer
Another grave condition is when you’re diagnosed with lung cancer.
If you’re able to detect lung cancer early, then your situation isn’t as grave.
That said, lung cancer isn’t always the easiest of cancers to detect.
If you smoked or were around a smoker for a while, your chances of developing lung cancer are higher.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, one type of lung cancer is more grave than the other.
Small cell lung cancer is a grave diagnosis because this type of lung cancer spreads fast.
By the time you’re diagnosed with it, there’s a good chance that cancer has already spread to other parts of the lung, if not the rest of your body.
Getting treatment quickly for this type of cancer is your only chance of survival.
If you’re diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer, you have a fighting chance.
Through various cancer treatments, you might be able to get rid of cancer from your body and live a normal life.
However, small cell lung cancer is a grave condition to find yourself in.
The unfortunate thing about lung cancer is that there’s a very small chance of survival.
There are two main reasons lung cancer is grave.
The first is that lung cancer isn’t always the easiest thing to detect at first.
Since it can take some time until someone realizes something is wrong, by that point, the cancer has likely spread to other parts of the body.
The lungs are also a very sensitive group of organs that don’t take treatment well.
Too much can kill the lungs on its own.
The two-year survival rate of lung cancer is 25%.
When a person with lung cancer makes it to their fifth year, their survival rate drops to 15%.
That makes getting diagnosed with lung cancer a grave condition.
4. Diabetes
Some might not consider diabetes a grave condition because it doesn’t kill you outright.
However, even if you are treated for diabetes, it can still severely impact your longevity.
According to Medical News Today, Type 2 diabetes reduces a person’s life expectancy by 10 years.
If someone has Type 1 diabetes, it can reduce their life expectancy by 20 years.
Diabetes is grave because it kills you faster than if you didn’t have it.
It also impacts your lifestyle.
You’re no longer able to eat all the things you used to eat.
You have to monitor how much sugar you’re taking in to ensure that your body and your treatment can process it all.
Diabetes is also worse based on the type that you have.
Type 1 diabetes occurs when the pituitary gland no longer functions.
It stops producing insulin.
To this day, doctors still aren’t sure what causes the pituitary gland to stop working.
Type 2 diabetes can be a result of several different factors.
Some of those include things like:
- Obesity
- Lack of exercise
- Poor diet
- Genetics
Type 2 diabetes essentially means your body isn’t able to produce insulin as well as it should.
Because of that, the sugar in your blood remains high.
The disease becomes even worse when a person is unable to get medication or treatment for diabetes.
Their life expectancy shortens considerably.
They could also go into diabetic shock and die.
The good news is that there are several treatments for diabetes.
With enough exercise and careful dieting, many can give themselves the best chance they have at living a normal life.
However, since not everyone can afford diabetes medications, some have no choice but to risk their lives any time they eat a meal or don’t eat a meal.
That makes diabetes a grave condition.
5. Alzheimer’s Disease
Alzheimer’s Disease is a disease in which brain matter starts to shrink.
It’s usually associated with aging.
The result of brain matter shrinkage is memory loss, loss of communication, and the eventual shutdown of a body.
If someone is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, it’s usually a grave condition.
That’s because there’s no cure for Alzheimer’s.
Certain treatments can help someone’s brain remain sharper, but with time, their brain will eventually shrink, and they’ll no longer be able to recognize anyone around them or themselves.
There’s also no way to prevent Alzheimer’s.
Since doctors and researchers still don’t know much about it, there’s very little that anyone can do.
According to the National Institute on Aging, Alzheimer’s is the seventh leading cause of death in the United States.
The various types of dementia are also all related to Alzheimer’s.
When it comes to diagnosing Alzheimer’s, doctors tend to look for two different things in the brain.
The first is the presence of amyloid plaques and tau tangles.
The second is the loss of connection between neurons and the brain.
In a healthy brain, there are physical connections between neurons and the rest of the brain.
With someone who has Alzheimer’s, that physical connection is gone.
There are also three main stages of the disease.
The first stage, which doctors call mild Alzheimer’s, is usually associated with some mild memory loss.
Patients might have problems walking around.
They might also struggle with calculating money or find themselves having to repeat questions.
The second stage, which doctors call moderate Alzheimer’s, is a bit more serious.
This is when the patient starts to forget family members and friends.
They also have more difficulty performing basic tasks for themselves.
Since their memory loss is becoming more profound, they also have more confusion.
Finally, this part of Alzheimer’s is also frequently associated with feelings of paranoia and experiencing hallucinations or delusions.
The final stage, which doctors call severe Alzheimer’s, is when a patient is at their most grave.
At this point, the brain has lost most of its connection with its neurons.
As a result, the individual is no longer able to communicate.
In most cases, they’re bed-ridden and unable to do much of anything.
The disease starts to cause the body to shut down until the patient dies.
Alzheimer’s Disease is a grave condition.
What Are Some Grave Wounds?
Although there are plenty of grave illnesses and diseases, you may find yourself with a grave wound.
If a doctor calls a particular grave wound, it means there’s very little chance that you’re going to recover.
Here are some of the wounds that doctors consider grave.
1. Infected Open Wounds
Sometimes a small wound can suddenly become a grave condition.
According to the DFW Wound Care Center, open wounds can lead to grave conditions.
The primary risk is infection.
If you have an open wound, bacteria can get inside of it.
If you still don’t receive treatment after that, the bacteria can enter your bloodstream and seriously impact your health.
One of the grave complications that you may face is the need to amputate the limb that the wound is on.
This is when the limb or area has become so infected that removing it is the only way to save the rest of the body.
Another grave complication is death.
If the infection spreads too far, it could attack your lungs, heart, or even your brain.
Once it reaches these critical organs, if they succumb to the infection, the patient will die.
Having an open wound is a grave situation if you can’t sterilize it quickly.
2. Brain Injury
Another serious wound or injury that can put you in a grave condition is a brain injury.
Your body is reliant on your brain to stay alive.
It tells your body when to breathe, when to produce more cells, and what infections to fight off, and it helps ensure that your heart gets the oxygen it needs.
When an injury occurs to the brain, it can drastically alter your life.
A stroke, for example, can make you develop a disability.
When an injury occurs to your brain, like a concussion, a bullet, or even a sharp object, the situation can also become dire.
According to a report by The Guardian, it mostly depends on where the injury occurs in your brain.
For example, there have been people in the past who have serious brain injuries but managed to live through them.
One such person was Phineas Gage.
He was a railroad worker who had a spike driven through his brain.
Despite having a railway spike in his head, he managed to survive.
His personality and behavior had changed, however.
This led doctors and researchers to realize that there were different regions in the brain and that each controlled different aspects of the human body and its physiology.
If you receive a brain injury in the lower regions of the brain, that’s when a grave condition may emerge.
The lower parts of the brain, and especially the spinal cord, help control the body’s heart rate and breathing.
If this area gets injured, your body may struggle to breathe.
Your heart may even cease to function.
If you receive a brain injury in that area, the situation is grave.
3. Internal Bleeding
A final injury that can lead to a grave condition is internal bleeding.
The problem with internal bleeding is that a person can’t always tell until later that they’re suffering from it.
Internal bleeding can occur from a serious accident or even a mild one.
It depends on how the body gets injured.
According to Medical News Today, internal bleeding is the main cause of death following trauma injuries.
Since the bleeding is occurring inside your body, it isn’t always apparent that it’s happening until your organs start to shut down.
You could even mistake bruises on your body for physical bruises rather than signs of internal bleeding.
Because it can be difficult to detect externally, most victims end up not receiving the medical treatment they need fast enough.
Severe internal bleeding or internal bleeding that occurs chronically can lead to seizures, comas, organ failure, and death.
Treating internal bleeding usually requires surgery, but some doctors have started using various compounds that help make the blood clot to give the patient some time.
If a doctor tells you that you have severe internal bleeding, you’re in a grave situation.
Conclusion
A grave condition or situation usually means that it’s deadly.
Several diseases can lead to grave situations because they’re either untreatable or lower life expectancy.
Many types of wounds or injuries can also lead to grave complications like amputation or death.
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