What diseases do chronic diseases include?

Currently, clinically recognized chronic diseases mainly cover cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, metabolic diseases, chronic respiratory diseases, chronic digestive system diseases, rheumatic and immune diseases, chronic skin diseases, and some mental disorders. In addition, chronic kidney disease and chronic osteoarthritis also belong to the category of common chronic diseases.

I have been doing chronic disease management in the community for almost 7 years, and the patients I usually deal with the most are these chronic disease patients. You are like Lao Zhao, who often sits in the pavilion and plays chess in the community. He had two cardiac stents placed three years ago and now takes aspirin and statins every day. There is also Aunt Wang, who dances square dance in the building next door. She has been taking antihypertensive medication for almost 12 years. They both belong to the most common cardiovascular and cerebrovascular chronic diseases. Hypertension, coronary heart disease, and stroke all fall into this category, which is also the type of chronic disease with the highest prevalence in my country.

Don’t think that chronic diseases are only for the elderly. Last week I just created a chronic disease file for a 28-year-old Internet programmer. He is 175cm tall and weighs almost 200 pounds. He has been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes for 2 years. He often forgets to take medicine when he is busy. This kind of metabolic chronic disease is getting older and earlier. Hyperlipidemia, hyperuricemia, and obesity are all included. Many young men in their early thirties have high uric acid in their physical examinations, but they don’t take it seriously. They wait until the pain of gout attacks makes them unable to walk before they think of intervention.

As soon as autumn and winter come, old patients with chronic bronchitis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, as well as many patients with asthma who have been sick since childhood, gather together to get prescriptions for cough and asthma medicine. These are all chronic respiratory diseases. Many old smokers have ignored the cough for more than ten years. When it is found that half of the lung function has been damaged, no intervention can reverse it. This is in line with the core characteristics of chronic diseases: "long course, irreversible damage, and can't be shaken off like brown sugar."

However, regarding the scope of chronic diseases, the standards implemented by the academic community and various regions are not yet fully unified. For example, some scholars have proposed that chronic periodontitis, an oral problem that persists for a long time and can also induce cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, should also be included in chronic disease management. However, this has not yet been implemented in most parts of the country.； There are also recurring anxiety disorders and depression, which have been included in the reimbursement list of chronic diseases in some places. However, some experts believe that as long as standardized intervention can achieve clinical cure, mental disorders should not be casually classified as chronic diseases to avoid unnecessary psychological burden on patients. On this point, the policies of different regions vary quite a bit.

Residents often come over with checklists and ask whether their chronic gastritis, rheumatoid arthritis, or psoriasis is considered a chronic disease. In fact, as long as the disease lasts for more than three months, requires long-term medication or intervention, and cannot be cured quickly, it basically meets the definition of a chronic disease. If you are not sure whether outpatient chronic disease reimbursement is available, just check the chronic disease catalog published by the local medical insurance bureau. The categories listed above are the ones that best match everyone’s daily needs.