hi everyone welcome to the penguin Prof Channel today I want to talk about how to approach medical terminology uh what I like to call breaking up which isn't hard to do so the key of course is to take big complicated problems and to break them down into small more manageable pieces this is true for language as well as the rest of life um the problem of course as I've mentioned in other videos is that in science and medicine we use a lot of terms that come from Greek and Latin roots so I highly recommend that as you master all these pieces you keep a list um or better yet get yourself a dictionary of Greek and Latin roots and um you know you just build your skill set from the bottom up and it gets easier as you go I promise um first thing to understand is that you got to break words down into their component parts and most medical and science terms will have um a beginning which we call a prefix a middle which is the root of the word and then an ending which is the suffix and so usually the prefix um and or the suffix is is a modifier um of the main root of the word so you will probably notice if you haven't already that uh medical terms are really long and uh it's very daunting for a lot of people but the truth is most of them are very descriptive and they mean something so if you can break them down it's not going to be too bad I mean when you first look at these terms uh you can just say you know forget it this is ridiculously long or you can just say look you know break them down and they become more manageable so all I want to do in this video is give you some of the most common of the puzzle pieces that you will encounter in medical terminology uh and hopefully give you a good place to start so something you'll see every time we talk about bone and the skeletal system is Osteo um when we're talking about cell parts when we're talking about conditions things like this slide shows uh osteoarthritis don't let this happen to you by the way take care of your joints um you're going to this Osteo somewhere in there Osteo site in fact is the name of a bone cell when you see mayo or Sarco that refers to muscle uh all different types of cell structures within muscle you're going to see uh with mayo or Saro for example you'll see the sarir you'll see the sarcoplasmic reticulum you will see uh myofibers or myofibrils all of those things relate to mus muscle um muscle has a lot of really specialized structures and almost all of them you're going to see with mayo or Saro usually in the prefix this one you probably know already neuro refers to nerves um a neuron is a nerve cell which is what you're looking at here but there's a lot of other terms of course that use that root so you know you're always going to be talking about nerves there when you see Derm that refers to the skin you probably know a lot of these terms already the EP epidermis which is this section way up here at the top Epi just means on top um there are five layers of the epidermis um and then beneath the epidermis is the dermis the dermal layer which is what you're seeing down here so Derm you probably have heard of terms like dermatitis for example just inflammation of the skin a dermatologist um things like that all relating to the skin blood vessels you're going to often see the term angio and you've hopefully heard of angioplasty which is basically the insertion of a of a little catheter in a balloon which is inflated in order to create space inside an uded vessel um V veins we have Veno or flebo like a FLOTUS FLOTUS is someone who draws blood um for their profession you see that a lot most people know cardio and the heart um we really don't know why when you suffer emotional distress uh your heart aches that's kind of a mystery of modern medicine I can tell you that uh Tylenol does not help things relating to the nose you'll often see Rhino like rhinoplasty which is a nose job um and of course that's the root for the rhinoceros so named because of not so much its big nose but big horns this term uh from Tony refers to things like the tanic membrane which is the eard drum the tempany that's the kettle drum in an orchestra and of course uh the drum vibrates and creates a particular pitch and similarly when uh sound waves strike the tanic membrane and cause it to vibrate that will cause the uh ear oses to vibrate and set up a whole chain of events which leads to your ability to hear um this one you probably don't know but nef NE pH uh relates to the kidney um the functional unit of the kidney is the nefron this is um the actual nefron here um that is how the kidney is able to filter blood and produce a filtrate which will eventually be urine so here's some more um some of these you may know um they're all pretty common the skull uh the skull itself actually is referred to as the cranium you've probably heard of that um the eye you'll see things like opthalmologist you'll see um an ocular the ear is auto Otto um autoliths those are the tiny little uh bones in the ear they're actually the smallest bones in the body that's I was I was mentioning earlier a blood clot um you've probably heard of a thrombosis um that's fairly commonly used um liver you see hip a lot uh liver cells are called hepatocytes um you may have heard of hepatitis uh which is a disease of the liver um breast actually you're going to see things like um mamory glands I'm sure you've heard of mamography large intestine we use uh Colo as in the colon for the large intestine itself but you'll see it in other things like a colonoscopy um gastro for the stomach ilio for the small intestine thoro for the chest um you've I'm sure heard of things like uh the thoracic wall um the thorax all the same root and then the lung numo or PLO I'm sure you've heard of pneumonia um PLO you'll see things like uh puracy um relating to the inflammation of lung membranes a lot of terms uh prefixes especially relate to size um Size Matters of course macro uh which means large micro which means small you probably know those Mallo or Mall means large or enlarged uh rates this is really important to take note because a lot of these prefixes look very much the same but they mean dramatically different things so for example if your patient is hyper thyroid it means that their thyroid is overactive if they are hypothyroid it means the thyroid is not as active as it should be so the the main part of the word looks the same but if you change that prefix it means a completely different thing um tacky and Brady referring to rates as well often in reference to the heart so tacki cardia for example is a resting heart rate that is too fast um Brady cardia resting heart rate that is slow colors we uh have a lot of prefixes relating to color uh chlorophyll for example like in plants is green uh Luke is white you see that in lucos sites red arthro uh rytes red blood cells and uh cyan which is the color blue like arthro cyanin uh cyanobacteria you may have seen in general biology those are the blue green algae oh my goodness spend some time with these directional terms directional prefixes because they will mess you up um sometimes I swear these little guys um are what drive people crazy look at this for example so Endo or intra both mean within but look at this difference intra versus Inter which means between so for example I would say intra cellular and that means within a single cell right but what if I say inter cellular so that means between cells it sounds like a very small difference but it means a dramatically different um idea so most people would think about perhaps intercourse yeah that's a good one uh which is between people there there is no such thing as incourse um as far as I know extra refers to outside um you certainly know things like extraterrestrial uh Perry Perry means around uh so when we talk about something uh that is around a structure um a parium for example um that is fairly commonly used to mean around something it could even be it could be a cell it could be a whole sheet of tissue it could be around an organ uh the paric cardium for example is a membrane surrounding the entire heart and then trans that means across so this could be something like um A protein that actually goes across a cell membrane u a transmembrane protein or you could be using it to discuss uh an actual process um you're going to see that as well but these are little guys that really make a big difference um testing procedures these get used a lot and uh it's really helpful to know these because um you'll see them over and over again Echo is in echo cardiogram using ultrasonic waves um Electro I'm sure you know um ectomy is the removal a gram is a picture um you can talk about a graph the process of making an image making a cut um um using an instrument for viewing or creating an opening these are very common and finally uh some problems uh dis meaning not working properly um Mal as a prefix meaning bad um the term malady comes from this uh malaria uh was a disease that was thought to be spread through the air so literally malaria means bad air we now know of course it's not caused by the air um emia is referring to some sort of blood condition um an itis anything with itis is an inflammation an osis that's just a very very broadly used term for a condition or disease um as is uh the suffix pathy for example neuropathy um is a very broad term for a disease of the nervous system so when you put it all together um we can take some big complicated words and break them down so here is a three-parter for you hyper cholesterol tmia so when you break it down you can see that hyper which means elevated this refers to of course cholesterol and emia this is referring to uh a condition in the blood it's elevated blood cholesterol dermatitis I think I gave that one away earlier uh Derm referring to the skin and that itis is the inflammation so that's just an inflammation of the skin a colostomy referring to the colon and then an actual opening in the colon so some things for you guys to try on your own uh there's plenty of fun things to look at uh I think that you'll find that if you just kind of get over the initial Panic of wow these words are long and foreign uh you just got to keep going keeping keep reading keep exposing yourself to them and trust me uh it gets easier as always I want to thank you for visiting the penguin Prof Channel please come comment rate and subscribe join us on the Facebook page and follow on Twitter good luck