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"The Sick Girl", by Michael Ancher, 1882, National Gallery of Denmark. A disease is a particular abnormal condition that adversely affects the structure or function of all or part of an organism and is not immediately due to any external injury. [1] [2] Diseases are often known to be medical conditions that are associated with specific signs ...
In their book Society, Culture and Health: an Introduction to Sociology for Nurses, health sociologists Karen Willis and Shandell Elmer outline eight 'features' of the biomedical model's approach to illness and health: [1]: 27–29 doctrine of specific aetiology: that all illness and disease is attributable to a specific, physiological dysfunction
Signs and symptoms are also applied to physiological states outside the context of disease, as for example when referring to the signs and symptoms of pregnancy, or the symptoms of dehydration. Sometimes a disease may be present without showing any signs or symptoms when it is known as being asymptomatic. [13]
[24] [5] Health screening begins by identifying the part of the body where the symptoms are located; the computer cross-references a database for the corresponding disease and presents a diagnosis. [25] Overdiagnosis The diagnosis of "disease" that will never cause symptoms, distress, or death during a patient's lifetime Wastebasket diagnosis
A syndrome is a set of medical signs and symptoms which are correlated with each other and often associated with a particular disease or disorder. [1] The word derives from the Greek σύνδρομον, meaning "concurrence". [2]: 1818 When a syndrome is paired with a definite cause this becomes a disease. [3]
The International Classification of Diseases (ICD) is a globally used medical classification used in epidemiology, health management and for clinical purposes. The ICD is maintained by the World Health Organization (WHO), which is the directing and coordinating authority for health within the United Nations System . [ 1 ]
An infectious disease, also known as a transmissible disease or communicable disease, is an illness resulting from an infection. Infections can be caused by a wide range of pathogens, most prominently bacteria and viruses. [2] Hosts can fight infections using their immune systems.
Illness is a person's perceptions or embodied experiences of disease and are often varied based upon a person's understanding of illness in a biomedical, vital, or spiritual context. Although disease may be universally experienced, culturally-bound syndromes interpret manifesting illness in the context of their psycho-social setting. [ 11 ]