now when you start learning medical terminology it is a bit like a foreign language all sorts of long words complicated sounding words and it doesn't make a lot of sense but we can soon get to grips with it and this is the way to do it any word is going to have a prefix a prefix is the part that goes in front of the word and there's actually not that many of these so once you've learned 20 30 40 prefixes it sounds a lot but it's actually not that many that will tell you about what the word is going to be about it's the prefix the bit on the front and then at the end of the word there's a suffix and again there's not that many of these and that tells you about the word as well and then very often but not always there's a bit in the middle called the root and that's what the word is about now that makes no sense at all the way I've said it just now so let's go on quickly and look at some examples and try and bring some Clarity to this situation well the first prefix we want to look at is hypo when we see hypo in front of a word now hypo po po is under the bed Poes are under the bed there one way to remember it if that works for you if not high po low it Rhymes high Poo so this is the derived from the Greek word for under so when whenever we see hypo at the front of a word it means lower than it should be because as you probably know many parameters in the body are tightly and homeostatically regulated to be in the just right Zone not too high not too low and if they go below these physiological limitations into the pathological range it's called a hypo so hypo means abnormally low so prefixes in front suffixes after root in the middle and here we see two words hyperglycemia and hypoglycemia written out in Black now we already know that hypo is low anytime we see hyper in front of a word in other words anytime time hyper is a prefix that means High abnormally high so we have a homeo statically regulated physiological desirable range of a particular parameter if it's above that into an abnormal situation it's hyper now if we break the word down here hyperglycemia so you can see a written hper in red that's the prefix it's too high and in blue at the end of this word we see emia a e m i a now that's the English spelling if you're listening in the US it's doesn't have the a it's just e m i a but emia means in the blood so I don't know quite what glim means yet but I can see that there's a high per which is high and I can see that there's anemia which is in the blood so something is high in the blood and actually the gly there g l y c is glucose glucose is the only sugar that will be present in the blood if other sugars are absorbed into the body the liver converts them into glucose so when we're talking about blood sugar we're always talking about blood glucose levels so hyper high gly glucose emia in the blood hyper glycemia prefix red root in green suffix in blue the whole word is hyperglycemia high levels of sugar in the blood abnormally high levels of sugar in the blood and that might be greater than 7 milles of glucose in the blood when a patient has been fasted or greater than 11.1 milles of glucose in any situation would represent a abnormal hyperglycemia and whenever we find an abnormal situation we need to try and explain that situation to see what is going on here now the next word down hypoglycemia well we now know that the hypo is the prefix so that means abnormally low we see the root of the word which is gly and we know that's to do with the glucose and then we see the emia on the end which means in the blood so that is low blood glucose and generally speaking we don't want blood glucose levels to go below 4 millim sorry before four below 4 milles of glucose so anything lower than four we would count as a hypoglycemia we have a saying in diabetic control four is the floor we don't want things to go lower than a blood sugar level of 4 millimoles that would be a hypoglycemia that could be caused by too much insulin for example and we would need to treat that by giving perhaps some sugary drink or something to eat if the patient was alive and well alive and conscious rather and uh if the patient was unconscious we might need to give them injection of glucagon or intravenous um dextrose for example to bring the blood sugar levels up back into a physiological range so hypothermia hypo means low thermia is to do with heat or body temperature so hypothermia would be an abnormally low body temperature now body temperature does vary a bit throughout the day and from it's often lower overnight for example so there are some variabilities in it but we would normally describe a hypothermia as anytime the body temperature is less than 35° Centigrade although you'd probably be feeling pretty cold when your body temperature was 35.8 de Centigrade or something like that but hypothermia will call anything less than 35° centigrade in that case we would want to take steps to warm the patient back up again to get them back into the physiological range for temperature hyper means High thermia means body temperature so hypothermia is an abnormally high body temperature now if people are unwell if they have bacterial or viral infections they can develop what we call a a pyrexia or a fever they become febrile and in that case the body temperature will be increased so technically that is a hypothermia but normally we use the term hypothermia to talk about an abnormally high body temperature when the set point of the hypothalamus is set to normal levels in other words the patient doesn't have particular tissue damage doesn't have a viral or bacterial infection which is inducing a higher body temperature so we'll call a hypothermia and increase in body temperature when the set point of the hypothalamus is normal and we can Define at the level at where hypothermia starts differently some people say anything higher than 38.3 de Centigrade but certainly if someone's temperature is up to 39° Centigrade they they would be hypothermic and I would be getting concerned um anything above 39 really and by the time someone's temperature got to 40 I would be very concerned and would want to bring it down as a matter of urgency because they could be developing heat stroke and these are life-threatening conditions in fact everything we've mentioned on this page is a life-threatening condition hyperglycemia can cause long-term health problems severe health problems hypoglycemia can be life-threatening over just a few minutes rapidly life-threatening condition hypothermia is life-threatening and hypothermia is life-threatening there's been a few tragic cases of soldiers on exercise who've developed hypothermia exercising walking up Mountain carrying packs and weapons often in full combats so the sweat doesn't dry you see the sweat has to dry or the body temperature can start to rise so beware of the ambushes from high pose and high purs and let's correct them and get them back down to physiological ranges before they damage the people under our care now there's a word here I haven't come across before hypo alamin emia well hypo actually means low and emia means in the blood so this must be low levels of albumin in the blood and I do remember that albumin is one of the plasma proteins in fact it's the most ubiquitous plasma protein produced in the liver from amino acids and it's the one that gives the blood a lot of its uh osmolarity a lot of its um oncotic pressure to suck fluid back in from the capillaries so hypo Albin emia must mean low levels of albumin in the blood and of course this is exactly what it does mean and if patients are hypo albumin EIC because they they're not able to osmotically suck back in the tissue fluids from the interstitial spaces back into the blood then these patients can often become swollen with edema they can accumulate tissue fluid and you might have seen these awful pictures of children with big blown up tummies when they've got protein deficiency this is because they're hypoalbuminemic and they can't suck the fluid back in from the tissue spaces into the intravascular compartment and therefore become a Demus because of the hypoalbuminemia the treatment of course is to restore the amounts of protein in the blood and in malnutrition we can simply do that by giving them protein to eat hypothyroidism hypo low now when you see ISM on the end of a word ISM that means a condition of and thyroid is the thyroid gland in the neck that produces the thyroid hormones the T3 and the T4 so hypothyroidism is low thyroid condition of literally so a condition where there are low levels of activity in the thyroid gland giving rise to low levels of thyroid hormone in the blood and this condition of we know it's a condition of because of the ism a condition of low thyroid and we can treat this by giving artificial thyroid tablets it's usually fairly straightforward to treat as long as it's identified and the hypothyroidism would normally be diagnosed by analyzing the the amount of thyroid stimulating hormone or the amount of thyroid hormones in the blood so the converse of hypothyroidism is hyper thyroidism hyper high thyroid thyroid gland ISM a condition of where there are high levels of thyroid activity forward whatever reason for example this could be caused by Graves disease which is an autoimmune disease causing over stimulation of the thyroid gland again we can recognize this through the clinical features that we might associate with the condition and we can diagnose it definitively using various blood tests now when we are talking about hypo and hyper sometimes we say it quickly and it's not obvious which one we're saying so we have to be clear it's hypo thyroidism hyper thyroidism say the word clearly because if we say it quickly it can sound much the same and can get a bit uh get a bit confused now here we see tension used twice as a suffix on the end of a word and tension means pressure so hypertension literally means high pressure now we would actually need to specify where the high pressure is so for example someone might have pulmonary arterial hypertension which would be high pressures in the pulmonary artery but if we use the term hypertension in an unqualified sense it usually means increased blood pressure in the systemic circulation so when you take your blood pressure you might find your systolic pressure is 120 millim of mercury you might find your diastolic pressure is 80 millim of mercury maybe a little less of your young and fit and if it was high that would be hypertension now where hypertension begins we can argue about sometimes we might want to be careful with patients if their blood pressure is over 140 over 90 but hypertension means an abnormally high blood pressure unless it's qualified by some other specific location hypotension low pressure and again unless we actually specify a particular location we're normally talking about the systemic arterial circulation when we use the term hypotension so if a patient is hypotensive we need to monitor that situation because they might be going into shock for example or if you're lying down especially on a warm day then you get up all of a sudden you might feel dizzy for a second or two that was a postural hypotension the blood pressure is a little little low while the autonomic nervous system adapts to the new standing position where the blood pressure needs to be a little higher some people people have quite severe postural hypotension and they have to sit up really slowly to let their blood pressure adjust but hypotension is a lower blood pressure than we would expect and of course if someone's very hypotensive dangerous situation because as have said they could be becoming shocked and if the blood pressure is so low that the tissues of the body are not adequately profused we would Define that as a clinical shock now you probably getting the hang of the highs and lows now just a few more examples to finish off hyper high cholesterol emia high levels of cholesterol in the blood possibly contributing towards the process of atherosclerosis development which we don't want so we might give statins to bring that down and we might give patients advice on their lifestyle to help lower their cholesterol so hyper cholesterolemia really quite simple hyper the prefix cholesterol the root emia the suffix high levels of cholesterol in the blood well here's another long word hypog gam globulin emia but if we break it down it's quite easy hypol lemia in the blood so there are low levels of gamma globulin in the blood and gamma globulins are mostly the immunoglobulins the immune proteins so if someone had hypogammaglobulinemia they would be predisposed to developing infections if you work in healthcare very often we're giving hypodermic injections with a hypodermic needle hypo means low or below dermic is the dermis so a hypodermic needle is one to penetrate below the dermis so that could be for subcutaneous injections intramuscular injections or intravenous injections they're all hypodermic because they go below the dermis or we could use a hypodermic needle to penetrate through the dermis into a vein to get a blood sample we're still using a hypodermic needle below the dermis hyper High activity just the English word so hyperactivity is where there is an increased amount of activity and if this is increased or a pathological or abnormal situation that could be called a hyperactivity disorder so what we've done here is we've taken words that can initially look a little little bit complicated divided them into prefixes suffixes often with a root in the middle and if we look at it in those terms once we've built up a little bit of a vocabulary we can work out what the words mean so anytime you see a new word if you don't understand it don't let it go past you just maybe quickly write it down then later on check on the prefix the root and the suffix and you should come to understand the meaning of a very wide vocabulary of medical terminology relatively quickly