Comorbidity – What Is The Meaning Of Comorbidity?

This is the meaning of comorbidity that you probably don’t know yet.

COMORBIDITY – Here’s a further understanding of the medical term comorbidity and how it differs from complication.

The word comorbidity is a medical term used to describe a certain condition where there is more than one disease a person is suffering at the same time. These are long-term and usually chronic.

Comorbidity
Photo lifted from UNITY Of Greater New Orleans

An abstract from the National Library Of Medicine defined it as “associated with worse health outcomes, more complex clinical management, and increased health care costs”. The nature of the health conditions that co-occur includes diseases, disorders, conditions, illnesses, or health problems.

A medical and psychiatric disorder occurring at once can be described by this. And in psychiatry comorbidity is when there’s an association of diagnosable psychiatric disorders.

Based on a post from WebMD, the other terms considered to call this particular medical term are “multimorbidity” and “multiple chronic conditions”.

Now, how is it different with complications?

A complication is a problem or a side effect that appears during disease or after a certain operation or treatment. Comorbidities, simply speaking, is another illness or disease that exists with a primary health concern.

Older people have higher chances of suffering from comorbidities but adults and younger people may also have this.

A person can possibly have depression, arthritis, diabetes, and high blood pressure all at the same time.

These are the common comorbid conditions:

  • Heart disease
  • High blood pressure
  • Respiratory disease
  • Mental health issues like dementia
  • Cerebrovascular disease
  • Joint disease
  • Diabetes
  • Sensory impairment
  • Arthritis

What’s hard about this is a person does not only suffer more than one condition but also suffers from a different set of symptoms. It doubles and sometimes, triples the burden.

And since there is more than one health problem, each has different treatments to manage or cure them.

Healthline named these factors associated with having this touch condition:

  • reduced quality of life
  • impaired function
  • worse physical and mental health
  • increased death

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