well welcome to this talk my name is John Campbell and I'm going to be talking you through some of the prefixes we use in medical terminology in this presentation now the prefix comes in front of a word and gives us information about the word that's going to come so whenever we see a on front of a word that means without so apnea a hria aony or mean without the word that is to come now what I've done in these presentations as I've made the prefix in Red so we see the word there is apnea aania pronounced apnea and in the States you wouldn't include the O in the word so pinea means breath or air so apnea means without breath or air a pinea pronounced apnea so someone who is apneic is not breathing now the Chlor hyria refers to the hydrochloric acid in the stomach so achlorhydria would be a condition where there is no hydrochloric acid in the stomach in practice it would mean there is less hydrochloric acid in the stomach than normal aony now the Tony part there or the Tenny part t n y that refers to the tone of a muscle so atony is a condition where the muscle has lost its tone the muscle has lost its strength so for example in the postoperative situation there could be a gastrointestinal atony and if that's bad it could be a paralytic alas where the bowel isn't working at all for a period of time or there could be a uterine atony that's loss of tone in the uterine musculature after childbirth no normally of course it's the the contraction of the uterine muscle which compresses the vessels and reduces the blood flow so if there's uterine Aton after muscle after child birth then there can be more bleeding because the bleeding vessels are not clamped down on it lacks the direct pressure so a in front of a word simply means without the bit of the word which is then to come now an a n in of a word as a prefix also means without so a or an in front of a word actually mean the same thing so anerobic anerobic metabolism for example is metabolism that takes place in the absence of oxygen giving rise to the production of lactic acid so anerobic means without oxygen or we may have anerobic organisms in a wound wound causing wound infection anerobic organisms being organisms which thrive in an o in an oxygen depleted atmosphere or anemic now emic a m i c is to do with the blood so if someone is an emic they have no blood they are anemic in practice of course it doesn't mean they have no blood at all it means they have lowered concentrations of hemoglobin in their blood and there is therefore A reduced oxygen carrying capacity of that blood but technically anemia means without blood so there's reduced amounts of blood now if you go to the dentist to get your tooth out you'd be very grateful for an anesthetic an anesthesia an without anesthesia means feeling so anesthesia literally means without feeling which of course is very desirable if a doctor or a dentist is inflicting something painful Hors so anesthesia literally without feeling so remember the prefix a or an always means without now anti a NTI means against or opposed to so an antibiotic is against biological life literally against biotic life and specifically this is to do with bacteria so an antibiotic will kill bacteria that is what it is against anti peristalsis now peristalsis for example in the gastrointestinal tract will Propel things from the direction of the mouth to the direction of the anus so normally when we swallow this peristaltic waves going from the mouth down the esophagus towards the stomach but if there's anti peristalsis that will be going in the opposite direction as might occur in vomiting where there is regurgitation against the normal physiological Direction so that would be anti peristalsis an anti-inflammatory drug is going to act against inflammation so for example steroid drugs such as as hydrocortisone are going to be highly anti-inflammatory they will act against they will inhibit the anti-inflammatory response or we have a group of drugs called nonsteroid or anti-inflammatory drugs which are anti-inflammatory drugs but which are not steroids such as ibuprofen or indomethacin or aspirin so they're anti-inflammatory because they're acting against the inflammatory response now anti with an e a n t means before something before in time so for example anti-natal natal refers to birth so anti-natal would be care or a period of time before birth so the antinal period would be before the birth occurs antinal care would be any care that occurs really from the time of conception right up until the time of birth it is before the time of birth so it's anti-natal Brady in front of a word always means slow Brady pania would be slow breathing Brady cardia cardia is to do with the heart so a Brady cardia is a slow heart rate technically any heart rate below 60 beats per minute although we'd have to think about that in the context of the patient's phys olical Norm but Brady cardia slow heart Brady kinesia kinesia means to do with movement so if someone has Brad kinesia their movements are slow as for example might occur in Parkinson's disease cardia cardiac card means to do with the heart so in a cardiac arrest the heart is arrest tested and there is essentially no cardiac output cardom megal well cardio means heart so can you see there's a heart megal cardio megal and megal means pathologically enlarged or big so a mega structure is a big structure a megal is when the thing being described is enlarged so aut cardal is an enlarged heart as may occur for example in chronic left ventricular failure there is a abnormally enlarged heart Cardiology or a cardiologist Cardiology is the study and science of the heart a cardiologist is someone who studies the heart usually referring to a doctor who specializes in cardiac diseases now coli means to do with the bile you might remember that when red blood cells have lived for about 120 days they're broken down by the macro fages in places such as the spleen but that Billy Rubin is released and the Billy Rubin travels to the liver and is incorporated into the bile the bile then goes down the hepatic ducks and is stored in the gallbladder so Ki as a prefix means bile to do with bile now when I've got a three-part word in this series I've put the prefix in red and the suffix in blue and the root of the word in Black in the middle so here we have a word colicy ectomy so coli is bile cyst is a fluid filled space relating to the bladder so the KY cyst is the gall bladder an ectomy is a surgical removal of so KY bile cyst bladder ectomy removal of surgical removal of the gore bladder colangitis refers to inflammation of the bile ducts so coal is bile itis inflammation of colangitis inflammation of the bile duct now most commonly this will be caused by ascending bacterial infection Comm coming up from the duodenum so for example if there's a blockage caused by gall stones or a tumor there can be Associated infection of the bodu leading to inflammation of the bodu or there's another fortunately rare condition called primary sclerosing colangitis sclerosing means hardening of a tissue and in primary sclerosing colangitis it's probably an autoimmune disease it's certainly idopathic we're not quite sure what causes this but there's inflammation leading to fibrosis leading to obstruction over time leading to therosis and uh liver failure so it can be quite a chronic condition of uh this primary colangitis KY cystitis Ki bile cyst bladder so that's the gore bladder itis is inflammation of so chicy itis is inflammation of the gore bladder for example there might be a stone obstructing the cystic duct which is the duct communicating to and from the gore bladder if that's blocked the bile won't be able to escape the B will be retained in the gore bladder it will become Static and whenever we have stasis infection is likely to develop and the infection can cause the inflammation and in fact if this is severe the there can be pus developing inside the gallbladder that would be a condition called empa of the gallbladder but in colitis caused by infection there'd be pain in the upper right quadrant of the abdomen and the patient can be very unwell they can be fever and even sepsis now call if it's just c as we see in the red prefix here means to do with the colon so call for colon the large intestine and you probably know this begins down in the lower right portion of the abdomen with the seeum the appendix the ascending colon transverse colon descending colon on the lower left side of the abdomen sigmoid colon rectum and anus all that large intestine so colostomy a colostomy is an opening ostomy means opening into a surgical opening so a colostomy is where the bowel opens normally onto the wall of the abdomen formed by a surgeon when usually part of the colon is taken away for malignant reasons for example and an opening of the colon is made onto the abdominal wall colostomy colomy well ectomy mean means removal of surgical removal of so a whole colcom a complete collecto might be fairly rare but you can get various forms of partial colomy where part of the colon is removed kitis is inflammation of the colon this could be a simple viral or bacterial infection or it could be ulcerative colitis which is an inflammatory disease affecting the colon now coli forms COI forms are the sort of bacteria that normally live in the colon so actually when you pass fees when the the stool if the stools are dried about a third of the dry weight of the stools is actually bacteria so coli form are the type of bacteria ecoli for example that are normally found in the colon in the colon it's fine but if they get into other places such as the bladder they can cause infection such as cystitis if the the bladder is infected so colii forms are the type of bacteria from the colon now I wasn't sure whether to include Melancholy because it's not really a modern medical term but Melancholy literally means black bile and and this goes back to pre-scientific days when people believed in the humors so if you meet someone and they say oh you're in good humor today that that goes back to this humoral theory of disease where there were four humors blood yellow bile black bile and Flem with a four humors of course this is all pre-scientific nonsense today really but it was believed that low mood and depression was caused by too much black bile so melan as in melanite is black Co bile black bile so um melan mly feeling depressed feeling fed up having low mood um that's where it derives from Melancholy the prefix cyst a cyst is a fluid field space and we normally use it as a prefix to mean bladder so we've already noted that you can have a colic cystitis cyst in that case is bladder but poy is the gore bladder but when we use cyst just on its own we usually mean the urinary bladder so cystitis is inflammation of the urinary bladder an ovarian cyst would be a collection or a fluid filled space that occurs in the ovary or it could occur in other places as well but it just means a fluid filled space cystoscopy would be to look into the bladder scopy means to look into or to look at Endo means inside so endoscopy would be to look inside endoscopy so a colonoscopy looking into the colon a gastroscopy looking into the stomach a cystoscopy looking into the bladder are all forms of endoscopy it is anytime we are looking inside endocardium so the endocardium is the inside layer of the heart the outside layer is the pericardium the middle layer is The myocardium in the inner layer of the heart is the endocardium the layer inside the heart lining the chambers of the heart endocarditis would be inflammation of the endocardium the endometrium is the inside layer of the uterus so Endo simply means inside andic comes from the Greek word inocos which means intestine so it means intestinal so enteric fever would be a fever that derives from an intestinal infection inic feeding would be putting food directly into the gastrointestinal tract so naso gastric tubes we often call those inic tubes in actual fact the nasogastric if they're inic they go straight into the intestine but we normally call it inic feeding though having said that anytime you eat normally that's inic feeding because it's going into the intestine enteric coated would mean that a medication is covered with a special coating so it's not absorbed in the stomach but goes straight through to the intestine Intero virus would be a virus that infects the intestine gastroenterologist or gastro his stomach and then the uh ento part would be the intestine so that would be a stomach intestine and an olist or a logist is an expert so gastroenterologist is someone who is an expert in the stomach intestine yeah the stomach and the intestine together they are an expert in those two things normally of course it means a doctor who studies diseases of the gastrointestinal tract now this dyss is one of the more common prefixes and it means an abnormal or painful situation so dis Ura the prefix is dis the suffix is Ura painful passage of urine dis menoa Ria means to flow the M part there the men part is to do with menstration so this this Menara means painful menstruation pain associated with menstruation often referred to as period pains would be dis Menara disia the pinea part is to do with breathing so dnia is difficulty or pain breathing normally we use the term dpia to indicate abnormal or difficult breathing when the patient finds it difficult to get their breath now I don't get the next two mixed up dysphagia the fagia part is eating or swallowing so dysphagia is difficulty swallowing dysphasia the phasia part relates to speech so dysphasia is difficulty with speech both of those for example can occur after cerebrovascular accidents Gast or gastro refers to the stomach the this is the anatomically precise stomach between the esophagus and the duodenum so gastritis inflammation of the stomach IUS means inflammation of gastroscopy to look into the stomach very often with an endoscopic gastroscopy tube gastroparesis now paresis means a weakness and sometimes for example in long-term diabetes there's damage to the nerve supply to the stomach which means there's a weakness in the stomach and it can't process the food properly and that can result in vomiting especially of the patients eat large meals so gastro prefix paresis suffix paresis means weakness gly means to do with sugar as we've said before the sugar in the blood is glucose so hypoglycemia hypo low gly sugar emia in the blood low blood sugar levels normally before below 4 milles glycogen is the storage molecule for glucose in the blood so when the blood sugar levels rise insulin is released and Insulin has several functions but one of them is it will convert glucose into glycogen a polysaccharide insoluble storage molecule and the glycogen is then stored in the liver and muscles when the blood sugar levels drop if people need to increase their blood glucose levels then the hormone glucagon is released and that will reconvert the glycogen from the insoluble glycogen form back into the soluble glucose form to restore and maintain homeostatic levels of blood glucose he means to do with the blood so h a e m is the traditional English spelling h m is the American spelling the US spelling doesn't make any difference both mean blood so hematuria prefix heem suffix Ura that is blood in the urine bleeding into the urine hematemesis now Amis means vomiting so hematemesis is blood in the vomit so this can be frank blood that looks like obvious fairly fresh blood or it can be altered blood because if people bleed into the stomach then the blood is partly digested if it's there for a period of time and then when it's vomited out it looks like coffee grounds we call this coffee ground vomit so suspect Frank blood and suspect coffee ground appearance as being hematemesis hemoptisis is the coughing uper blood from the respiratory tract typically that blood is reddish fairly bright red and and often frothy because it's mixed with sputum and of course the cause of all these things need to be explained these are all serious clinical signs that can represent significant pathology that need to be explained so we have hematology and hematology is the study of blood so a hematologist is someone who studies blood and blood diseases now Hemangioma the heit on the front is blood angio in the middle the root there is to do with blood vessels and Omar om ma a means a lump so in a h hangi is a collection of blood vessels that forms a lump under the skin means a lump sometimes these are called strawberry marks because the surface looks a bit like the surface of a of a strawberry usually they're a bit raised a bit red and they might feel warm because of the there's more blood near the surface of the body but remember the components of the word he is the prefix angio blood vessels Omar lump in so it's literally blood vessel lump Homa Hemi h m i means half so the Earth has a Northern Hemisphere and it has a southern hemisphere half spheres plegia now plegia means paralysis now you probably know it's the right side of the brain that controls the left side of the body and it's the left side of the brain that controls the right side of the body so if there's a severe stroke that affects the right side of the brain that can paralyze the left side of the body going all the way down the middle down the symmetry line of the body and plegia is paralysis so hemia would mean half of the body is paralyzed but alternatively the body might not be paralyzed it might just be weaker on one side so that would be a Hemi paresis so plegia means paralysis paresis means weakness or there might be a root in the middle of a word with Hemi at the front hemic colomy so Hemi means half col means colon ectomy means surgical removal of so a hemicolectomy would be a surgical removal of half of the colon a hemic colomy now hepatic or Hipp is to do with the liver so hipat site is a liver cell hipat is the prefix liver site is cell so the individual functional liver cells are the hepatocytes hepatitis I on the end is inflammation of so hepatitis is inflammation of the liver for whatever cause for example it could be a viral infection causing hepatitis hepat megal so prefix hipat we know it's to do with the liver megali means big or enlarged so hipat megal would be an enlarged liver for example if someone's been drinking too much alcohol the liver cells can fill up with fat giving rise to an enlarged liver a hipat megali or hpat cellular carcinoma hipat cellular is a primary tumor that begins in the hepatocytes so unfortunately it's relatively common to get malignancy in the liver as metastatic spread from the gastrointestinal tract but a hpat cellular carcinoma is one which is a primary starting in the liver where the malignancy starts in the hepatocytes themselves hipat cellular carcinoma hyper means too high hypo means too low but we've actually dealt with these in some detail earlier on in this presentation laparo as a prefix means to do with the ab abdomen so laparotomy otomy means a surgical opening into so laparotomy would be opening the abdomen laproscopy would be looking into the abdomen perhaps using a surgical fiber optic device to look into the abdomen laparoscopy lith or litho means a stone so lithiasis is where there are Stones present and of course these are completely pathological so you might be sent for a lithotripsy tripy means to crush or to break up or pulverize it's Greek so lithotripsy would be a crushing of a stone Euro lithiasis would be euro is the urinary tract lith is the stone Asis is condition of so urolithiasis is when there is a condition of stones in the urinary tract of course a pathological situation chasis is where the stones related to the bilary system so in colar lithiasis Stones can develop inside the gore bladder they don't do too much damage in the gore bladder but when they pass out into the cystic duct and the um common bile duct they certainly can cause severe pain bolic but look at the word COI bile lith Stone Asis condition of stones from the gore bladder or Stones generated in the gallbladder present in the gallbladder or present in the bile ducts col lithiasis now in surgery you might have come across a very undignified position called the lithotomy position this is where the legs are put in stups and held up and apart lith lithotomy and this goes back to the very early days of surgery where people were put into this lithotomy position to remove bladder stones and the position is just stuck it's a lithotomy position lipo or lipid means fat so a fat is a lipid so lipemic would mean fat in the blood D lipidemia would mean an abnormal profile of fats in the blood so dis is abnormal or painful in this case abnormal lipid is fat and emier is in the blood so what you're supposed to have is a certain amount of high density lipoprotein and a certain amount of low density lipoprotein the high density lipoprotein is protective against arterial disease against atherosclerosis whereas the low density lipoprotein is atherogenic it will cause the condition so if someone is D lipidemic if they have a high level of low density lipoprotein and or a low level of high density lipoprotein predisposing them towards the development of atheroma so they would be D lipidemic and we would need to treat that with lifestyle and probably with statins lipoma is a fatty lump so these can often occur Under the Skin for example they're they're benign but they form a fatty lump and we can tell they're benign because they're soft and because they move freely between finger and thumb and when we send samples to the histologists they'll tell us that they are benign but we they're often removed because they're inconvenient or cosmetically unsatisfactory lipoma so lip fat Omar lump lipoma Mal is another a very common prefix meaning abnormal so malfunction means that the function is not normal malabsorption means that the absorption is not normal very often referring to the absorption of nutrients from the gastrointestinal tract into the blood and lymphatic system if there's not normal absorption there can be malabsorption syndromes malnutrition means abnormal nutrition if someone doesn't get enough of some nutrients they will be malnourished or indeed if someone takes too many of some nutrients particularly energy containing nutrients such as fats and carbohydrates they'll become obese that's because they've got too much of a dietary component they are malnourished so malnutrition can mean too much or not enough of a nutrient malunion that's the time often a term often used in Orthopedics where the bones don't heal together properly there's a malunion of a fracture or the fracture is healing in an abnormal position just means an abnormal Union of Bones Mast is to do with the breast so mastectomy would be surgical removal of a breast mastitis is inflammation of a breast very often mastitis can occur as a complication of breastfeeding where there's bacterial infection in a breast but does tend to respond very well to antibiotics but a painful condition mastalgia Alia is pain so mastalgia would be pain in a breast and gynecomastia we normally use this term to describe breast development in men so when men develop breasts we call that gynecomastia for example men that drink a lot of alcohol can develop gynecomastia and it can also be a side effect of some medications or a feature of obesity Mayo is the prefix indicating muscle so The myocardium is the muscle of the heart so myocarditis would be inflammation of the muscle of the heart as for example might be caused by a viral Al infection causing viral myocarditis myopathy is disease in a muscle myo muscle pathy disease of myopathy Myoma om means a lump so a Myoma would be a benign lump in a muscle as oppos to a myosarcoma which would be a malignant lump in a muscle rabdo myo liis right the myo part you know that means muscle Lis means to break up and the rabo there actually means uh Rod shaped or straight so this is Breakup of the sceletal muscles there can be a rabdomiolisis the problem with rabdomiolisis is it will release free hemoglobin into the blood and that can clog up in the glami causing an acute renal failure rabdomiolisis nef or nephro means to do with the kidneys so a nephrologist is someone who studies the kidneys and kidney diseases nephrotic syndrome nephrotic is where the Glam in the kidneys become leaky and can leak protein into the urine causing a protein UR this can diminish the amount of protein in the blood and potentially lead to edema nephrotic syndrome nephritis itis is inflammation of the kidneys Pyon nephritis the pyo part relates to the renal pelvis the uh the nef part is the kidney the itis is inflammation of so Pilon nephritis means inflammation of the renal pelvis the renal parenchima the renal tissue isue itself inflammation of and it's usually caused by bacterial infection and a very serious condition it is or can be nephrotoxic means that something is toxic to the kidneys so quite a few toxins can be nephrotoxic and we have to be careful with some antibiotics gyin for example if we give too much gyin that will be nephrotoxic so we have to monitor the gyin levels to make sure we're not in the nephrotoxic range we're not damaging the patient's kidneys hydr nephrosis Hydro is water actually means urine well it literally means water but in practice it's urine nef is the kidneys and osis is condition of so hydrosis is where the urine dams back dams back up into the kidneys and the hydrosis when the kidneys are water loged with urine over time will cause cause renal failure olig or oligo means few or not enough so oliga would be low volumes of urine oligospermia would mean that there's not enough sperm in the seminal fluid meaning conception is less likely to occur oligo handris is a deficiency in the amount of amniotic fluid surrounding the fetus potentially giving rise to congenital birth defects and sometimes what we call a Potter syndrome Perry means about or around or surrounding so pericarditis well the pericardium is the layer around the heart so pericarditis would be inflamation of that pericardial layer perinatal is the timer roundabout birth just before during and just after birth and we sometimes talk about peroperative care the care of the patient before surgery during surgery and in the post-operative period peroperative Prost means to do with the prostate gland so prostatitis would be inflammation of the prostate gland causing pain in the perenial area between the legs and sometimes causing blood in the seminal fluid so-called hematospermia prostatism would just be an abnormal condition of the prostate gland so very often as men age they get benign prostatic hyperplasia giving rise to lower urinary tract symptoms but of course prostate cancer can develop as well and is is perhaps in fact is the most common cancer diagnosed overall in men fortunately prostate cancer affects older men rather than young men prostatectomy well we know the ectomy part means surgical removal of so this could be removal of all of the prostate gland or part of the prostate gland so for example commonly we do a transurethral reection of prostate where the prostate gland is reamed out from the inside to reduce the obstruction caused by the prostatic enlargement pyro is the Greek word for fire so a pyrexia is when someone has a high body temperature they are hotter than we would expect them to be in health another word for pyrexia is fever but then if we go the next day and take the patient's temperature again and the temperature's gone then we would say they are now apyrexial a means without a pyrexia so hopefully at the moment you're a pyrexial you do not have a a pyrexial body temperature you do not have a fever an antipyretic is a drug which will bring down body temperature when the patient has a pyrexia so if we give paracetamol or aspirin or another non-steroid or anti-inflammatory drug that will have an antipyretic effect it will bring down body temperature but it will only bring the body temperature back down to normal so if someone's temperature is 39 and we give them paracetamol that will bring the temperature down very often back down to 37 but if someone's temperature is 37 already it won't bring it down lower than that because it is is preventing the fever mechanisms which are being generated in the hypothalamus a pyrogen is something which will increase body temperature so for example a bacteria or a virus in the blood can act as a pyrogen and also the back berial or viral components in the blood will be recognized by the white blood cells and the white blood cells will release pyogens and these pyogens go to the hypothalamus to increase the body temperature so the Pyro means fire or heat and gen of course means to begin so the pyogens will stimulate the development of a temperature and usually that's a good thing because the body works best or the immune system of the body works best at Pyrex seal temperatures and that will help to combat the infection tacki means abnormally fast it's the converse of Brady if you remember from earlier on in this presentation so tachicardia would be a fast heart rate takip Pia would be a fast respiratory rate