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How To Understand Medical Terms - Education - Nairaland

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How To Understand Medical Terms by Khan1993: 12:49am On Oct 06, 2014
I am a prospective medical student. There is this aura of feeling that medical student are gurus. Not disputing this o but i dont like it when people tag then that.. We are just normal student like anybody else. To why i created this topic, the average nigerian student will get dizzy just glancing at a medical student notes. Why? Just because of the term used.. So here i want to believe have been able to make even an economics student understand some of the terms using various webs research(non plagiarism here)...
The Basics
To begin, it must be understood that most
medical terminology derives from Latin or
Greek. If you didn't study these in school,
or even if you did, I suggest you visit the
local library and check out a medical
dictionary (or perhaps your doctor will let
you borrow one). Dorland's Medical
Dictionary is a handy one to start with. By
no means will you become an expert
overnight -- remember, it takes years for
that. But at least if you can understand
some of the words and how they're
formed, you'll be well on your way toward
making sense of what you read and hear at
treatment updates regarding new
medications and research data.
Start by looking at the whole word in
question. For example "pancytopenia."
Then break it down into its various parts.
Pan-cyto-penia. In this example, pan
means "all" or "total," cyto refers to cells,
and penia indicates a deficiency. So the
definition of pancytopenia is a deficiency
of all blood cells. Got it? O.K.
Let's try another one. How about
"lipodystrophy" (I know that's a favorite).
Let's break it down. Lipo refers to fat;
trophy is talking about growth or
development. And anything with the word
dys in it has an abnormality. So there it is!
Lipodystrophy: An abnormal development
of fat. Anyone for liposuction?
Here's an even simpler one, "leukocyte."
We've already learned that cyto refers to
cells. If you look up the definition of leuko,
you'll see that it means white. So a
leukocyte would be a white blood cell. Ta-
Da! It should now be easy to figure out
what leukocytopenia means. And if you
knew that erythro means red, how would
you say "deficiency of red blood cells" in
medical-ese? Yeah.. Go on..try it.. Erythrocytopenia... Good... now if you are so keen on getting this right.. Follow this link
Http://thebody.com/content/art13571.html.. Mind you those gurus took 6 years to get this right o

2 Likes

Re: How To Understand Medical Terms by Donfamous(m): 4:31am On Oct 06, 2014
Good one op, so helpful.
But d link isn't usable
Re: How To Understand Medical Terms by Khan1993: 8:12am On Oct 06, 2014
Re: How To Understand Medical Terms by Hughehade01: 10:36am On Mar 11
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