Besides meningitis, another disastrous effect of meningococcal disease is "disseminated intravascular clotting," or DIC, in which blood in vessels throughout the body clots and solidifies, starving tissues that depend on its circulation. Deep and disfiguring scarring and limb amputation are common outcomes. A small number of infected children—fewer than one in 1,000—die of meningitis and DIC, and many survivors are permanently damaged. Another reason meningococcal disease is feared is its fulminant (to use a doctor's favorite word for "explosive") course: Within a few hours, a seemingly normal patient can become devastatingly, lethally ill.