The excess of cells is in part removed with the fluid, in part they disappear by undergoing solution and in part they are devoured by other cells.

With the diminishing cell activity the blood vessels resume their usual calibre, and when the newly formed vessels become redundant they disappear by undergoing atrophy in the same way as other tissues which have become useless.
When these changes take place rapidly the inflammation is said to be acute, and chronic when they take place slowly.

Chronic inflammation is more complex than is the acute, and there is more variation in the single conditions.

The chronicity may be due to a number of conditions, as the persistence of a cause, or to incompleteness of repair which renders the part once affected more vulnerable, to such a degree even that the ordinary conditions to which it is subjected become injurious.

A chronic inflammation may be little more than an almost continuous series of acute inflammations, with repair continuously less perfect.