Hi learners! Welcome to our last mini lesson for chapter 4 in the Intenimentary System. This one is a fairly quick one so we're going to focus on procedures and pharmacology. So there are two categories for procedures. You will see these in most of the chapters.
Diagnostic procedures are those that focus on finding a diagnosis or identifying the cause of a disease or condition. Therapeutic procedures are those that are used to treat or cure a disease or condition. So let's go through the list in your text.
First are the diagnostic procedures. Diascopy is used to test if a lesion is vascular or non-vascular, meaning basically does it have a lot of blood vessels, or is it hemorrhagic, meaning is it full of blood underneath the surface of the skin. Basically a microscope slide is pressed on the lesion and if the lesion turns white or we say it blanches, the lesion is likely inflammatory.
If it does not blanch, the lesion is likely non-vascular like a mole or it's hemorrhagic like petechiae or purpura. So we're basically using it as a diagnostic tool. Microscopic examination can include skin scrapings for things like fungal infections and scabies.
We all know how I feel about scabies. We can also perform a simple test called a Zank test. And FYI, your book spells this wrong, it should be CK at the end.
T-Z-A-N-C-K. Where scrapings are taken from the vesicles on the skin and stained with a special stain. And you're looking for large, multi-nucleated cells.
Remember, multi-nucleated just means it has more than one nucleus. And you're looking for those specialized cells of the herpesvirus. We use cultures in many different ways in healthcare. We look at things like blood cultures, urine cultures, and wound cultures.
So when we take cultures, we basically take a sample from the fluid or lesion or whatever culturing, and we put it in a medium that allows it to grow enough to be analyzed. And then we determine exactly what virus or bacteria we're looking at, and then what drug can be used against it. So basically we're just growing it out in a medium so we have enough of the organism to identify it.
In a biopsy, abbreviated BX, we take a piece of the living tissue and then we send it off to a lab for microscopic analysis. So we can determine things like malignancies, fungal diseases, immune diseases, things like that. Different types of biopsies include things like a punch biopsy, meaning you punch out a section of the tissue.
Extisional biopsy, where you excise or remove, cut out, basically. the whole lesion. Shave biopsies, which is exactly what it sounds like you shave off a piece of the biopsy. Core needle biopsy, where you take like a core sample with a needle, you just basically insert a needle and take out some of the lesion. And endoscopic biopsies and a few others.
Now this is pretty cool. A tool that is used in dermatology is something called a Wood's Lamp. And a Wood's Lamp or Wood's Light is basically a fancy schmancy black light and this can be used to do things like define borders of pigmented lesions before they're excised or cut out and that's important because you don't want to cut out healthy tissue during the procedure and then under a black light things like pseudomonas as seen here on this person's toes pseudomonas will fluoresce green fluoresce means to glow brightly under a uv light So if we shine a black light on a pseudomonas infection, it will glow like this. And then on this slide, this shows you how a Woods lamp can be used to determine a diagnosis of vitiligo.
Remember, vitiligo was the pigment disorder that causes patchy loss of skin color. And vitiligo is easy to see on somebody with dark skin tones, but not as easy to see on somebody with a light skin tone. So you can see... the picture on the left, the person has very light skin and you can't really tell the vitiligo on her eyelid, but if you put that same skin under the blacklight, you can see the loss of pigment on her eyelid and confirm the diagnosis of vitiligo. And we call that area of loss of pigment, we call that hypopigmentation.
Remember hypo means low or below. So hypopigmentation is what we refer to as the loss of pigment in that area. And we can confirm the diagnosis of vitiligo by using the Woods Light in cases where we're not sure.
So I thought that was pretty cool. All right, so let's talk about some therapeutic procedures. Photodynamic therapy, abbreviated PTD, uses high-intensity light combined with a light-sensitive drug, and that helps destroy abnormal cells.
So they shine this intense, bright light, which activates the drug and destroys the abnormal cells, and it's used to treat things like acne and certain precancerous conditions. Especially one called actinic keratosis. Laser therapy.
Laser therapy can be used to treat things like birthmarks, scars, acne, vascular lesions, warts, and skin disorders. Things like rosacea, psoriasis, and even vitiligo has been treated with laser therapy. Chemical peels.
I've never actually seen a chemical peel, but this just sounds awful. I'm not judging if you've ever had a chemical peel, but it just sounds very painful. Chemical peels involve applying an acidic solution, something like glycolic acid or salicylic acid, to the face, neck, or hands.
And these peels are used to treat things like fine lines, wrinkles, sun damage, and reduce the appearance of age spots and dark patches on the skin. These dark patches are called melasma. And what it does is it peels off or it causes the peeling of the top layer of the skin. Dark patches are also called melasma. And melasma is sometimes called the mask of pregnancy because it can cause hyperpigmentation of the face after pregnancy.
Cryotherapy or sometimes called cryosurgery. Cryo means cold. So cryotherapy can be used to treat several skin conditions. And it's best suited for small lesions, especially on non-hairy areas.
So cryo means cold, and basically the small lesions are frozen off. So things like sebaceous plaques or warts and some small skin cancers can be sprayed with a liquid nitrogen solution, which basically freezes the tissues, and then they scab and fall off. What I don't have on here is Botox, and Botox is a medication. that is used in some cosmetic procedures.
And cosmetic is one of the vocabulary terms in your book. And cosmetic comes from the Greek word adornment. And Botox is a drug that's derived from the bacterium Clostridium botulinum, which causes botulism.
And botulism is a fatal disease that's caused by eating poorly prepared foods, right? So Botox is short for botulinum toxin. And it's fatal because it causes muscle paralysis.
So when the muscle paralysis reaches your respiratory muscles, you stop breathing and you die. So what scientists have done is they refined that toxin into the drug Botox, and they've used it to treat many different things by injecting the Botox into areas of muscle spasm. So now they can treat things like migraines, urinary incontinence, strabismus in the eyes, and of course, Of course, when it's injected into superficial facial muscles that are causing things like wrinkles and frown lines, you can decrease those wrinkles and lines on your face. But of course, we've all seen the consequences of too much Botox as well. All right, moving on.
Dermal fillers are another cosmetic procedure that's used to reduce the appearance of wrinkles. So as we age, we lose subcutaneous fat. So the fillers, things like Restylane.
and Juvederm, they replace that subcutaneous fat and fill in those areas to help us get a more useful appearance. All right, let's look at some pharmacological agents. So pharmacological agents are medications that are used in treating skin disorders or relieving their symptoms. Topical medications are ones that can be applied to the surface of the skin and their effects are limited to the area to which they're applied.
So you'll learn more about the types of medications in your pharmacology class if you take it. So this, again, is just a brief overview. And then when you get to pharmacology, you'll be like, oh, I remember that. We talked about that in medical terminology.
So most of these terms can be broken down into the word parts if you forget what they mean. So the first one is anesthetics. Anesthetics relieve pain on the surface of the skin. So it's not an all-over pain reliever.
It's only on the surface. Anesthetics like benzocaine. That's a common numbing agent and it can be used for something like numbing the area prior to an injection, something like mouth ulcers, or for teething pain like ambesol in Babies. The IC means pertaining to, AN in the front, the prefix means without, and ESTHET means perception or sensation. So the term anesthetic means pertaining to without sensation, like anesthesia.
But an anesthetic means without sensation. Antibacterias are agents that kill bacteria. So common ones are neosporin, neomycin, facetracin.
Common antibacterial ointments. Something like severe infections that are all over, they require oral medications. But something like a cut that you're going to put a bandaid on, you can use something like neomycin. So again, anti means against, bacter refers to bacteria.
Antifungals, you can probably imagine what that means. They kill or inhibit the growth of fungi. Your book gives several examples of antifungals, things like micostatin.
There's that myco again. I think I said that in another video. I don't remember.
But myco means fungus, ketoconazole, clotronazole. Those drugs are all available in different forms depending on where the fungus is located. Creams, sprays, lotions, even shampoos.
And like antibacterial agents, if the infection is severe, you may need oral or a formative medication. But if it's just on the skin, then you can use those. the topical. Okay, antipyretics are medications that relieve itching.
Again, anti means against and prurit means itch. Prytis is the term for itching. So prurit means itch. Corticosteroids, drugs like hydrocortisone, are often used to reduce inflammation and therefore relieve itching.
So corticosteroids, if we don't talk about them in this class, we definitely talk about them in AMP. Those are used to decrease inflammation and relieve itching. Not AMP, I'm sorry, in pharmacology. Carotidlytics, keratin again. We talk about keratin a lot in this chapter.
Those are topical agents that peel away that stratum corneum from the other epidermal layers. So salicylic acid, usually in the treatment of acne, psoriasis, and ichthyosis. Remember, that was the condition where the skin had... Fish scale appearance and also in cases of severe dandruff.
Coradalytics can be, or I'm sorry, the term coradalytic can be broken down into that IC ending and lit, L-Y-T meaning to dissolve, and of course you should be able to recognize coradaline, the peritoneum. Parasiticide, that's kind of a tricky one to say, parasiticide, that ending side, C-I-D-E, means to kill, so think of the word homicide we need to kill and then the beginning of the word refers to parasites so these term this term refers to killing parasites living on the skin so think of drugs like lindane or nicks that kill lice so that's the first parasite that i can think of that would be that would need a parasiticide to kill a parasite and retinoids These are chemical compounds derived from retinol or vitamin A. So think of all the cosmetic commercials that you see on the TV.
So these drugs, unless you're talking about like a skin cream, the prescription drugs are usually prescribed under the care of a physician to treat things like acne and psoriasis and certain skin cancers. But the less powerful ones are usually found in things like wrinkle creams. skincare creams. All right and let's see there's a small text box, a small table under the list of drugs there, the types of drugs that gives you an overview of various forms of the medications, creams and treatments and things like that. Read that over, you'll get a lot more detail in the pharmacology course so just peruse them at your leisure.
And since this is the terminology course, let's take a look at the the words on the slide here. The common combining form for all these terms is pharmaco, meaning drug. The words have different meanings because we add different suffixes, right? So in the first one, we've added the suffix ology.
They all have something to do with drugs because they all have the same root word, so you should recognize that right away. But in the first one, we've added the suffix ology, which means the study of. So if we combine the two word parts together, we get pharmacology, which means the study of drugs. In the second term, we've added the suffix"-ologic", so we've added"-ic", at the end, so we know it's pertaining to, and pertaining to what? Pertaining to the study of drugs, so pharmacologic means pertaining to the study of drugs.
In the third one, we've added"-ist", and that suffix means specialist, so now we have someone who is a specialist in drugs, right? So a pharmacist is a specialist. in drugs or medications. So it's just that easy.
The words will come more easily the more you use them in homeworks and in your everyday activities. The more you read them, the more you get familiar with them, the more you will become familiar with them, and they will get easier, I promise, because you'll see the same endings and sometimes the prefixes as the chapters move along. Alright, I promise it will get easier. So...
That's all I have for the integumentary system. The next chapter is the digestive system. So, thank you for your attention and I look forward to seeing you in the next mini lesson.
Thanks!