Common medical terms are words and abbreviations often used in clinical notes, appointment letters, test results, prescriptions, and patient information. Some terms are plain English, while others come from Latin, Greek, anatomy, pathology, or older clinical shorthand.
Medical language is meant to be precise, but it can be difficult to read when it appears without context. A single word may have a narrow technical meaning in one setting and a wider everyday meaning in another. For example, "acute" usually means sudden or short-term in medicine, not necessarily severe. "Chronic" usually means long-lasting, not automatically serious.
How Medical Terms Are Built
Many medical words are made from a root, prefix, and suffix.
- Root: the main subject of the word, such as cardi for heart or derm for skin.
- Prefix: a part added at the start, such as hyper for high or hypo for low.
- Suffix: a part added at the end, such as itis for inflammation or ectomy for surgical removal.
This structure helps readers break down unfamiliar words. "Dermatitis" refers to inflammation of the skin. "Hypoglycaemia" refers to low blood glucose. "Tachycardia" refers to an unusually fast heart rate.
General Clinical Words
- Acute: starting suddenly or lasting for a short time.
- Chronic: lasting for a long time or recurring over time.
- Diagnosis: the identification of a condition from symptoms, examination, tests, and clinical judgement.
- Differential diagnosis: a list of possible conditions that could explain a person's symptoms.
- Prognosis: the expected course or likely outcome of a condition.
- Symptom: something a person notices or feels, such as pain, dizziness, or nausea.
- Sign: something observed or measured by another person, such as a rash, fever, swelling, or high blood pressure.
- Risk factor: something that raises the chance of a condition developing.
- Screening: testing people who do not necessarily have symptoms, usually to find early disease or increased risk.
Tests and Investigations
- Blood pressure: the force of blood against artery walls, usually recorded as systolic pressure over diastolic pressure.
- Biopsy: removal of a small tissue sample so it can be examined.
- CT scan: computed tomography, an imaging test that uses X-rays and computer processing to show cross-sectional images.
- ECG: electrocardiogram, a test that records the electrical activity of the heart.
- Endoscopy: examination of the inside of the body using a thin instrument with a light and camera.
- MRI: magnetic resonance imaging, which uses magnetic fields and radio waves to create detailed images.
- Ultrasound: imaging that uses high-frequency sound waves.
- X-ray: imaging that uses a controlled dose of radiation to show bones and some internal structures.
Body Systems
- Cardiovascular: relating to the heart and blood vessels.
- Gastrointestinal: relating to the stomach, intestines, and wider digestive system.
- Neurological: relating to the brain, spinal cord, and nerves.
- Respiratory: relating to breathing and the lungs.
- Renal: relating to the kidneys.
- Urological: relating to the urinary system and, in some contexts, male reproductive organs.
- Musculoskeletal: relating to muscles, bones, joints, ligaments, and tendons.
Conditions and Symptoms
- Anaemia: a reduced amount of haemoglobin or red blood cells, which can cause tiredness, breathlessness, or paleness.
- Arthritis: joint inflammation or joint disease, often causing pain, stiffness, or swelling.
- Diabetes: a group of conditions involving high blood glucose because insulin is absent, reduced, or not working properly.
- Fever: a raised body temperature, often linked to infection or inflammation.
- Fracture: a break or crack in a bone.
- Hypertension: high blood pressure.
- Hypoglycaemia: low blood glucose.
- Inflammation: the body's response to injury, irritation, or infection, often involving heat, redness, swelling, pain, or loss of function.
- Jaundice: yellowing of the skin or eyes caused by raised bilirubin.
- Pneumonia: infection or inflammation affecting the air sacs of the lungs.
- Stroke: brain injury caused by interrupted blood supply or bleeding in or around the brain.
- Tumour: an abnormal mass of tissue. Tumours may be benign or malignant.
Treatments and Care
- Anaesthesia: medicines or techniques used to reduce sensation, pain, awareness, or movement during a procedure.
- Antibiotic: a medicine used to treat bacterial infection. Antibiotics do not treat viral infections such as colds or flu.
- Dose: the amount of a medicine given at one time or over a defined period.
- Prescription: a written or electronic instruction for a medicine or treatment.
- Radiotherapy: treatment that uses controlled radiation, often to treat cancer.
- Surgery: treatment by operation.
- Therapy: treatment, support, rehabilitation, or counselling intended to improve symptoms, function, or health.
- Transplantation: transfer of an organ, tissue, or cells from one person or part of the body to another.
- Vaccine: a preparation that trains the immune system to recognise a disease-causing organism or toxin.
Abbreviations
Medical abbreviations can be convenient, but they are also easy to misunderstand. The same letters can mean different things in different services. Common examples include:
- BP: blood pressure.
- BMI: body mass index.
- CBC: complete blood count, more often called a full blood count in the UK.
- ECG: electrocardiogram.
- GP: general practitioner.
- Hb: haemoglobin.
- NAD: no abnormality detected, depending on context.
- OTC: over the counter.
- SOB: shortness of breath, depending on context.
When abbreviations appear in a record, the safest reading is the one that matches the clinical context around it.
See Also
References
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