crisis

crisis

Pathol a sudden change, for better or worse, in the course of a disease

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Crisis

 

a sharp turning point in the course of a disease that is accompanied by a drop in elevated body temperature and improvement in the patient’s condition.

A crisis usually occurs in acute-onset diseases with a rapid rise in temperature (croupous inflammation of the lungs, malaria, relapsing fever, and so forth). A crisis is associated with profuse sweating, marked weakness, and sometimes a temporary slowing of cardiac activity. A crisis is the opposite of a gradual subsidence of a pathological process and lowering in temperature called lysis. A crisis is to be distinguished from a pseudocrisis, in which there is only a temporary lowering of temperature and improvement in the patient’s condition. A critical drop in temperature may also occur as a result of removal of the suppurative focus from the patient’s body or administration of powerful antimicrobial agents.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

crisis

[′krī·səs]

(medicine)

The turning point in the course of a disease.

(psychology)

The psychological events associated with a specific stage of life, as an identity crisis or developmental crisis.

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.