What is the difference between “serious but not life threatening” and “critical but stable” condition??
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“Serious but not life-threatening” means you’ve sustained injuries that most would consider to be very bad, such that you maybe could have died if you did not receive medical attention, but now that you have received treatment, you’re in the clear and there’s little-to-no risk of you dying.
“Critical but stable” means you’re in a very bad condition, you’re in a state that many people die in. But that for at least the next few hours, you don’t appear to be actively *dying*. You’re not getting worse as we speak. You *could* get worse in the near future. Many things could go wrong and you could start to get worse and die. But as it stands, they haven’t happened yet and might never happen. You don’t appear to be *currently* getting worse.
An example of the first situation would be that you received several stab wounds, you lost a lot of blood, but now you’re in the hospital, your wounds have been treated and you’ve received a blood transfusion, no major organs were harmed, and there’s very little chance you’re going to get worse or die.
An example of the second situation would be that you went into cardiac arrest (heart not pumping blood), and are now on a ventilator because your body isn’t breathing on its own. This is very critical condition, and most people in this condition will be dead pretty soon. But for some patients, it is possible that they be stabilized for a couple hours or days where they’re still alive, don’t appear to be getting worse, but could go back into arrest at any moment. Crucially, some patients in this condition do actually survive long-term. They’re not *doomed*. If they were doomed, you might not say this was stable condition. Stability is a precursor to survival. If survival is impossible, you probably wouldn’t describe the condition as stable.
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