Terminal illness in the context of "Chronic condition"

Palliative care (from Latin root palliare "to cloak") is an interdisciplinary medical care-giving approach aimed at optimizing quality of life and mitigating or reducing suffering among people with serious, complex, and often terminal illnesses. Many definitions of palliative care exist.

The World Health Organization (WHO) describes palliative care as:

A cure is a substance or procedure that resolves a medical condition. This may include a medication, a surgical operation, a lifestyle change, or even a philosophical shift that alleviates a person's suffering or achieves a state of healing. The medical condition can be a disease, mental illness, genetic disorder, or a condition considered socially undesirable, such as baldness or insufficient breast tissue.

An incurable disease is not necessarily a terminal illness, and conversely, a curable illness can still be fatal.

Dementia is a syndrome associated with many neurodegenerative diseases, characterized by a general decline in cognitive abilities that affects a person's ability to perform everyday activities. This typically involves problems with memory, thinking, behavior, and motor control. Aside from memory impairment and a disruption in thought patterns, the most common symptoms of dementia include emotional problems, difficulties with language, and decreased motivation. The symptoms may be described as occurring in a continuum over several stages. Dementia is a life-limiting condition, having a significant effect on the individual, their caregivers, and their social relationships in general. A diagnosis of dementia requires the observation of a change from a person's usual mental functioning and a greater cognitive decline than might be caused by the normal aging process.

Several diseases and injuries to the brain, such as a stroke, can give rise to dementia. However, the most common cause is Alzheimer's disease, a neurodegenerative disorder. Dementia is a neurocognitive disorder with varying degrees of severity (mild to major) and many forms or subtypes. Dementia is an acquired brain syndrome, marked by a decline in cognitive function, and is contrasted with neurodevelopmental disorders. It has also been described as a spectrum of disorders with subtypes of dementia based on which known disorder caused its development, such as Parkinson's disease for Parkinson's disease dementia, Huntington's disease for Huntington's disease dementia, vascular disease for vascular dementia, HIV infection causing HIV dementia, frontotemporal lobar degeneration for frontotemporal dementia, Lewy body disease for dementia with Lewy bodies, and prion diseases. Subtypes of neurodegenerative dementias may also be based on the underlying pathology of misfolded proteins, such as synucleinopathies and tauopathies. The coexistence of more than one type of dementia is known as mixed dementia.

Hospice care is a type of health care that focuses on the palliation (providing relief of pain) of a terminally ill patient's pain and symptoms and attending to their emotional and spiritual needs at the end of life. Hospice care prioritizes comfort and quality of life by reducing pain and suffering. Hospice care provides an alternative to therapies focused on life-prolonging measures that may be arduous, likely to cause more symptoms, or are not aligned with a person's goals.

Hospice care in the United States is largely defined by the practices of the Medicare system and other health insurance providers, which cover inpatient or at-home hospice care for patients with terminal diseases who are estimated to live six months or less. Hospice care under the Medicare Hospice Benefit requires documentation from two physicians estimating a person has less than six months to live if the disease follows its usual course. Hospice benefits include access to a multidisciplinary treatment team specialized in end-of-life care and can be accessed in the home, long-term care facility or the hospital.

The last rites, also known as the Commendation of the Dying, are the last prayers and ministrations given to an individual of Christian faith, when possible, shortly before death. The Commendation of the Dying is practiced in liturgical Christian denominations, such as the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran Church. They may be administered to those mortally injured, terminally ill, or awaiting execution. Last rites cannot be performed on someone who has already died. Last rites, in sacramental Christianity, can refer to multiple sacraments administered concurrently in anticipation of an individual's passing (such as Holy Absolution and Holy Communion).

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as motor neuron disease (MND) or—in the United States and Canada—Lou Gehrig's disease (LGD), is a rare, terminal neurodegenerative disorder that results in the progressive loss of both upper and lower motor neurons that normally control voluntary muscle contraction. ALS is the most common form of the broader group of motor neuron diseases. ALS often presents in its early stages with gradual muscle stiffness, twitches, weakness, and wasting. Motor neuron loss typically continues until the abilities to eat, speak, move, and breathe without mechanical support are lost. While only 15% of people with ALS also develop full-blown frontotemporal dementia, an estimated 50% face at least minor changes in thinking and behavior, and a loss of energy, possibly secondary to metabolic dysfunction, is thought to drive a characteristic loss of empathy. Depending on which of the aforementioned symptoms develops first, ALS is classified as limb-onset (begins with weakness in the arms or legs) or bulbar-onset (begins with difficulty in speaking and/or swallowing). Respiratory onset occurs in approximately 1%–3% of cases.

Most cases of ALS (about 90–95%) have no known cause, and are known as sporadic ALS. However, both genetic and environmental factors are believed to be involved. The remaining 5–10% of cases have a genetic cause, often linked to a family history of the disease, and these are known as familial ALS (hereditary). About half of these genetic cases are due to disease-causing variants in one of four specific genes. The diagnosis is based on a person's signs and symptoms, with testing conducted to rule out other potential causes.

In medicine, triage (/ˈtriːɑːʒ/, /triˈɑːʒ/; French: [tʁiaʒ]) is a process by which care providers such as medical professionals and those with first aid knowledge determine the order of priority for providing treatment to injured individuals and/or inform the rationing of limited supplies so that they go to those who can most benefit from it. Triage is usually relied upon when there are more injured individuals than available care providers (known as a mass casualty incident), or when there are more injured individuals than supplies to treat them.

The methodologies of triage vary by institution, locality, and country but have the same universal underlying concepts. In most cases, the triage process places the most injured and most able to be helped as the first priority, with the most terminally injured the last priority (except in the case of reverse triage). Triage systems vary dramatically based on a variety of factors, and can follow specific, measurable metrics, like trauma scoring systems, or can be based on the medical opinion of the provider. Triage is an imperfect practice, and can be largely subjective, especially when based on general opinion rather than a score. This is because triage needs to balance multiple and sometimes contradictory objectives simultaneously, most of them being fundamental to personhood: likelihood of death, efficacy of treatment, patients' remaining lifespan, ethics, and religion.

Life insurance (or life assurance, especially in the Commonwealth of Nations) is a contract between an insurance policy holder and an insurer or assurer, where the insurer promises to pay a designated beneficiary a sum of money upon the death of an insured person. Depending on the contract, other events such as terminal illness or critical illness can also trigger payment. The policyholder typically pays a premium, either regularly or as one lump sum. The benefits may include other expenses, such as funeral expenses.

Life policies are legal contracts and the terms of each contract describe the limitations of the insured events. Often, specific exclusions written into the contract limit the liability of the insurer; common examples include claims relating to suicide, fraud, war, riot, and civil commotion. Difficulties may arise where an event is not clearly defined, for example, the insured knowingly incurred a risk by consenting to an experimental medical procedure or by taking medication resulting in injury or death.