Welcome to Medical Terminology For Dummies! Consider this your personal, private course in the study of the medical terms used every day in doctor’s offices, hospitals, clinics, billing and insurance companies, labs, and even pharmacies. This is a personal grand tour through not only the world of medical terminology, but also through your own body.

You’ll find as you read this book that learning medical terms is a two-part proposition. First, you’ve got to master the landscape of language itself. Don’t worry, though — there will be no quiz. We just want you to better understand how to both create and break down words. Once you get to know more about prefixes, suffixes, and root words, you can do darn near anything with the terminology. For example, you can go inside the body to discover the terms that match up with different systems, diseases, procedures, and pharmaceutical products.

Mastering medical terminology involves more than just memorizing. Exploring these terms and how they can be created will unlock not only medical mysteries for you, but great opportunities as well.

About This Book

Getting to know the world of medical terminology can get a bit repetitive at times. That’s why we decided to break the book down into several parts about all kinds of different things. You start by getting the backstory of terminology — the history and the players involved with bringing this “language” to the masses. Then you get into the nitty-gritty of how words are formed and all about word parts, usage, pronunciation, and recognition. Finally, you take a gander at all the different body systems and the words associated with them. We even throw in some bonus top ten lists at the end that we hope you find useful.

There’s a lot to learn about medical terminology, we admit, but we’ll be right there with you for the whole wild, crazy ride. Keep in mind that you don’t have to read this book cover to cover, nor do you have to remember all the details from chapter to chapter. Read out of order, skip what you don’t need. It will all be there for you should you choose to revisit the sections, tips, or sidebars at another time.

Keep in mind that this is not a giant textbook of terms, nor is it a dictionary. Those are both great resources, and we recommend you pick up both if you are a medical professional. This is a friendly take on the topic, and our main goal is to show you the basics of how these words are made so that you can go out in the big, bad world and master the creation and use of medical terms on your own terms. We’re not giving you a fish; we’re teaching you to fish.

We do rely on some conventions within this book that you may not see elsewhere in an attempt to keep the tone fun and conversational. So, please be prepared to see a lot of the following:

We have included chapters about language and medical terminology’s place in it. You will notice we also make extensive use of lists in this book. We do this for your sanity. Be honest: Wouldn’t you rather be able to study these terms in organized, easy-to-find lists and tables rather than picking through long, boring paragraphs trying to find the words you need to learn? We thought so.

Major chapters are divided by systems of the body. Each system chapter tells you a bit about how that particular body system works, to give you some context for its words.

We aren’t doctors, so we try our best to explain things using simple language. That means you might see words like pee and poo from time to time. We figure you’re knee-deep in official-sounding terms here, so it doesn’t hurt to lighten up once in a while.

New terms are in italics to make them easier to spot.

Many of the body system chapters include artistic renderings. Don’t be alarmed by those little pictures you see peppering the pages of this book. Feel free to be distracted, however — that’s the point. We want you to stop and look at these great kernels of knowledge as you go through the book.

Foolish Assumptions

We are assuming you fall into one of these categories:

• A medical student hoping to get a jump-start on general terminology before that first big quiz.
• A medical professional looking to brush up on terms if you’re a bit out of practice or just want to know more about how these terms are made.
• A curious adult interested in speaking your doctor’s language and learning more about the terms that describe how your body functions.

No matter what possessed you to pick up this book, we hope it gives you the terminology boost you need for your particular circumstances. The human body has hundreds and hundreds of working parts, and they all have names. Moreover, there are names for all kinds of associated terms relating to functions, conditions, diseases, pathology, and even pharmacology. It’s a whole lot, we grant you. But you are eager, right? And no amount of 50-cent words frighten you away from your goal: to become a medical terminology Zen master. You can do it, Grasshopper.

Icons Used in This Book

This book makes extensive use of icons — those little pictures that denote an important tidbit of information. Be on the lookout for these, as they provide even more tools for your terminology toolbox:

Points out concrete tips and tricks that you can put to use as you are studying medical terminology.

Highlights passages that are good to keep in mind when mastering medical terminology.

Alerts you to common mistakes that can trip you up in your medical terminology studies.

This icon indicates something cool and perhaps a little offbeat from the discussion at hand.

Where to Go from Here

By all means, if you’re feeling spunky you can jump right into this book at any point and start working on your terminology savvy. Mastering the how and why of medical terms is sometimes as important as learning the terms themselves, which is why we put those chapters first. But by all means, feel free to hunt and peck the sections that are most useful to you.

Be bold. Be brave. And, most importantly, proceed through this book with confidence. Once you get the hang of how these words are made, you’ll have no problem committing them to memory and to your daily life.

IN THIS PART …

An overview of the basic building blocks of learning terminology

A background dossier on terminology and its history

An introduction to root words

A trip through the world of multiples and plurals

Tips and tricks on pronunciation and usage

The Tale behind the Terms

Medical terminology is made up of the terms that describe human anatomy and physiology (body organs, systems, and their functions), body locations, diseases, clinical, diagnostic imaging, and laboratory testing, together with clinical procedures, surgeries, and diagnoses.

It’s important for every one of these things to have a specific name — just as it’s important that you have your own unique name — because otherwise how would medical professionals be able to communicate clearly with one another? You might be able to visit your doctor and say, “I have a pain in my shoulder,” and have him solve the mystery of what is causing that pain. But when your doc communicates that information to, say, a surgeon, it’s crucial to be more specific.

The beauty of medical terminology is that it makes such vital communication more succinct and to the point. A medical term usually describes in one word a disease or condition that, under normal circumstances, would take several words to describe. Appendectomy is a one-word medical term to describe “surgical removal of the appendix.” Now that saves you plenty of breath for more important things, like singing an aria or rooting for the your favorite sports team.

The foundation of medical terminology is based in both Greek and Latin origin. The Greeks were the founders of modern medicine, but Latin is the basic source of medical terms. With origins in ancient Rome, Latin quickly made its way through the world, solidifying its rep as the language of choice for medicine and science. Building on guidance from the Greek and Latin origins, medical terms began to be professionalized in the mid-1800s. The first medical dictionary appeared in the 1830s shortly after the first edition of Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language.

Making Terminology Work for You

Thankfully, there are ways to wade through the quagmire of medical terms and figure out how to pronounce and use them like a champ. But you have to start at the beginning by breaking down the parts of each word and then deciphering its meaning. Or, to put it in a fancy-schmancy way, you should use etymology. Etymology helps you find the origin and historical development of a term. You can use etymology to decipher words with Latin and Greek origins, eponyms (words named after people), and acronyms (modern language terms that stand for longer phrases).

Back to those word parts that you’ll break down. There are three you need to know: roots/combining forms, prefixes, and suffixes.

Roots are the glue that holds all medical terms together. They are the basic form around which the final word is formed. A combining form is a combining vowel (usually o or i) plus the root word, usually with a prefix or suffix added. Prefixes appear at the beginning of a word and tell the how, why, where, when, how much, how many, position, direction, time, or status. The suffix, always at the end of a word, usually indicates a procedure, a condition, or a disease. While the prefix gives you a clue into what to expect in a word’s meaning, the suffix tells you what is happening with a specific body part or system. And, usually, it either entails what is wrong with you or the procedure used to diagnose or fix it.

The breaking down of words that you will learn in this book also helps you with pronunciation. With medical terminology, sounds are not always pronounced the same as in English, and there are no steadfast rules that a combination of specific letters will always be pronounced in the same way. One thing that helps in both the standard English and medical worlds, though, is to learn how to pronounce phonetically, by breaking up the word into smaller parts.

Building a Foundation of Vocabulary

Getting the basics of word formation and pronunciation down pat is the hard part. Once you can do that, you can move on to building your word vocabulary. Even though medical professionals like to joke that terminology is like a foreign language (sometimes, yes), don’t throw this book out the window just yet. The good news is that you probably already know a lot of medical terms and you can use those to build up the rest of your new-found vocabulary.

Remember your grade school days when you used all kinds of little tricks to remember things like multiplication tables and the state capitals? The same principle applies to new medical terms. You can make lists of word parts, list words by similar sound, map words, or memorize terms by body system. And those are just a few ideas. Do whatever works for you, even if it’s singing terms to the tune of “Sunrise, Sunset” in the shower. We promise not to tell.

In Terms of Anatomy

For our purposes in the land of medical terms, we can compare anatomy to the infrastructure of a building. The walls, floors, bricks, plaster, electrical system, plumbing, and so forth all help keep the building working for the people who inhabit it. Your body’s anatomy is no different, which is why you are going to read about these particular terms first. Once you get the basics of what holds your body together, you can go on to find out about the physiological systems that make your body react to both internal and external circumstances.

First on our anatomy checklist is the skeletal system. This is your body’s frame, much like the frame of a building. This system, along with its joints, works together with the muscles to give you the support and movement you need every day. The bony skeleton provides the jointed framework for the body, giving it shape, protecting vital organs from external injury, and providing attachment points for muscles, ligaments, and tendons.

Working together with the skeleton is the muscular system, in which several different major muscle groups work together. Made up of over 600 muscles and joints, this system is responsible for movement.

Covering all this infrastructure is the integumentary system. Your skin, glands, nails, and hair work like the façade, or outside covering, of a building. They are the things people see when they look at you. The outside of your “building” often shows the world how healthy the rest of your body is. Healthy skin, along with accessory organs glands, hair, and nails, are the hallmarks of healthy insides, so care for them accordingly.

Your sensory system is all the “fun stuff” in your building. The windows, amenities, sound system, and dining facility all bring aesthetic delight to the building’s inhabitants, and your senses work in a similar fashion.

It may be hard to imagine that words can describe all the amazing things your anatomy can do, but believe us when we say that it’s all possible through terminology. And who knows? Perhaps there’s a word out there that hasn’t been created yet — until you came along.

All Systems Go

Once you get those basic working parts ingrained in your brain, you will move on to the physiology terminology. Physiology deals with the remaining body systems that help your fabulous body do its day-to-day work.

First up is the thing that keeps your blood pumping and your life moving forward each day: your heart. More specifically, the cardiovascular system. Your heart does not work in a vacuum. It has supporting players, namely your blood cells and vessels. These parts all work together to supply your body with fresh, clean, oxygenated blood.

Then there is the separate but complementary lymphatic system that works to flush your body of impurities. Most directly associated with immunity, the lymphatic system works in the same context as the cardiovascular system due to the similar makeup of the system and the fact that, once cleaned by the lymph nodes, lymphatic fluid is released directly into the bloodstream. Lymph vessels are arranged in a similar pattern as the blood vessels.

Speaking of oxygenating your blood, think about how that oxygen finds its way into your body. You may not consciously think about it every day, but breathing makes it all possible. The body’s trillions of cells need oxygen and must get rid of carbon monoxide, and this exchange of gases is accomplished by the respiratory system. External respiration is the repetitive, unconscious exchange of air between the lungs and the external environment.

You have to breathe, but you also have to eat, and eating is way more fun. Your good buddy the gastrointestinal system helps turn those tasty meals and treats into usable energy for your body. Also called the alimentary or digestive tract, this system provides a tubelike passage through a maze of organs and body cavities, beginning at the mouth, the food entrance into the body, and ending at the anus, where solid waste material exits the body and your delicious Chinese takeout magically turns into … well, you know.

Moving on, the complicated endocrine system maintains the chemical balance of the body. It does this by sending chemical messengers called hormones throughout the body via the bloodstream. Hormones regulate and control activity of specific cells or organs. Slowly released hormones control organs from a distance. Endocrine glands are located in different parts of the body. They are said to be ductless, because they have no duct system to transport their secretions. Instead, hormones are released directly into the bloodstream to regulate a variety of functions of body organs. One can stimulate growth, another matures sex organs, and yet another controls metabolism. Your body has both central and peripheral glands.

Even more complicated (are we having fun yet?) is the nervous system. Working like the body’s built-in computer system, it is far more complex than your laptop. Messages from the brain are relayed via the spinal cord through nerve fibers that provide connections for incoming and outgoing data. The body has more than ten billion nerve cells whose function is to coordinate activities of the body. This system controls our voluntary activities as well as involuntary activities. We speak, hear, taste, see, think, move muscles, and have glands that secrete hormones. We respond to pain, danger, temperature, and touch. We have memory, association, and discrimination. These functions are only a small part of what the nervous system controls.

The nervous system is made up of the central nervous system (CNS), which includes the brain and spinal cord. The peripheral nervous system (PNS) is composed of cranial nerves (that extend from the brain) and spinal nerves (that extend from the spinal cord). The autonomic nervous system (ANS) controls and coordinates the functions of the body’s vital organs, such as heartbeat and rate of breathing — functions we don’t even think about.