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Terminal Disease. What Is It?

Filed in Health Sciences | Published on 7:04 pm | 6 comments so far | 89 views

In my previous physiology lecture, my lecturer had mentioned about terminal disease. I was wondering about the meaning of it and I want to know what is it, what kind of disease that they defined as terminal disease, so I jot down the term and today I Google-ed it.

Terminal disease is a disease that cannot be cured and will cause death. Oh, how scary. The patients with terminal diseases are termed as terminal patients. A patient is considered as terminally ill when he or she was medically diagnosed with malignant diseases* with life expectancy less than six months. They are not necessarily died though.

Certain types of cancers and diseases related to our vital organs like kidney failure, liver failure and heart diseases can be considered as terminal diseases. Although kidney and liver failure can be slowed down by doing organ transplant, they are still considered as fatal. AIDS also can be categorized as terminal disease which cannot be cured and will lead to death. But occasionally, AIDS patients died because of infections since their immune system has been suppressed by the HIV virus.

*Malignant diseases are life-threatening diseases. The opposite of it is benign which means mild or non-progressive diseases (not life-threatening).

I think maybe I can write more about health sciences based on what I’m learning and the knowledge I have in this area. Maybe it is useful to someone somehow.

    6 Responses to “Terminal Disease. What Is It?”

  1. Gravatar
    syia // on January 9th, 2008

    herm.. do u mean medically they can never be cure? so they just have to wait to die??

  2. Gravatar
    Fath // on January 9th, 2008

    As stated above, they cannot be cured and will lead to death. However, they are not necessarily die within the life expectancy given by the doctor. This disease can be slowed down, but cannot be cured.

    These are mainly chronic diseases involving vital organs. A damage to ONE vital organ is more fatal than a damage to MANY non-vital organs. A person can live without his spleen (let say this person undergone spleen removal) but he cannot live without his kidneys.

  3. Gravatar
    catzer // on January 11th, 2008

    I had been warning about terminal disease a few years ago. Yup, i got a heart problem but not too serious. I’m inherited the heart failure from my grandfather, moreover it also cause by suddenly stop from sport activities.

    Life must goes on, even im lost my lovely man and bestfriend. This life is not related with other anymore, only me. right now, just keep my strength enough to fight back alive.

    Sometimes, felt really depressed alone and sick. But, this is my journey in which nobody understood about that. :D

  4. Gravatar
    Fath // on January 11th, 2008

    Wish you a better health in the future :)

  5. Gravatar
    red heart // on January 31st, 2008

    could u pleez give me some information about the mental state of terminally ill people?

  6. Gravatar
    Fath // on January 31st, 2008

    No, I’m sorry… I don’t have that information. Maybe you can try Google…

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