Within medicine, there are several different concepts used to describe when disease symptoms return, worsen, or flare up again after a period of improvement. Although the terms may seem similar, they have slightly different meanings. Here are the most common ones explained.
Relapse refers to symptoms of a disease reappearing after a period of improvement or remission. The patient has felt better for a while, but then the symptoms come back.
Recurrence means that a disease returns after having been treated and apparently cured. Unlike relapse, recurrence implies that the disease was considered to be completely gone before it came back.
Recrudescence describes an intensification or worsening of a disease's symptoms after a period of rest, when the disease had been dormant or inactive.
Exacerbation means a worsening of a disease's existing symptoms. The condition does not necessarily return from scratch but becomes more pronounced and troublesome than before.
A flare-up, also called skov in Swedish, is a sudden increase in the intensity of a disease's symptoms. The term is often used in chronic diseases such as rheumatic conditions, inflammatory bowel disease, and multiple sclerosis.
All these terms describe that a disease becomes active again or worsens, but they differ in nuance: relapse concerns symptoms returning after improvement, recurrence after apparent cure, recrudescence an intensification after a dormant period, exacerbation a general worsening of symptoms, and skov a sudden symptom flare-up.
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