Welcome back. The next module we're gonna walk through today is the medical terminology. So I'm well aware that you've all had medical terminology in your training, but I wanna do basically a primer related to the cardiovascular term. So those really common terms that you're gonna see as you start to help take care of cardiology patients or cardiovascular patients. So I wanna start with anatomy. So I know we've kind of walked through the heart anatomy, but I wanna get you into the terms that we use. And first of all, I will tell you, I think we do this to be confusing. We have different terms for everything, compare, you know, there's like multiple ways we would describe things. And so I wanna walk you through this just as again, as you start to think about the reports that you're reading and some of the different things that you're seeing with the patients that you're helping to take care of. So I really wanna direct you to the words on the right. So just again, reminder, you should have had all of these in your previous training, but cardio is another term for heart. Myo is another term for muscle. Valvulo, that's a little easier, valves. Pneumo is lung, palm is also lung. So when we think about pulmonary or pulmonology, so we've got two different terms for lung. Gastro is stomach, axilla is actually armpit. And the reason that's really important is because when we start talking about direction, and again, in some of your reports, you'll see that term axilla or axillary. And that really means kind of outside of the chest and up under the arm. Extremities would be your arms and your legs. Vascular is another term for vessels. Costa is another term for ribs. And again, because we're talking about heart, you'll see that commonly, that costa. And phrenic is another word for diaphragm. And sometimes we like to put the words together like costa phrenic is really related to the diaphragm that sits right underneath the ribs. And we describe that as the costophrenic angle. So again, as you start to look at the different terms, sometimes we start to layer them and that can create even more confusion. But as you start to use them, they will really become a normal part of the way you speak when you're at your role in your job and it will become second nature for sure. So a few other things I wanna get you oriented to are the direction descriptors. So we do, when you start to read the report, you're gonna get a lot of anterior, posterior. So front and back, anterior is front, posterior is back. Another set of terms we like to use are medial and lateral. Medial means towards the middle. So when we describe something as the medial angle or the medial side of the knee, it means it's in the middle. So towards the middle of the body. Lateral means towards the side of the body. So if you go back to our last lecture and I talked about the lateral heart wall, that would be the wall that's on the side or closer to the outside of the body. And then I described the anterior wall and the posterior wall. So the anterior wall would be on the front side of the heart. The posterior wall would be on the backside of the heart. And then the other is the proximal and distal. So this one can be a little bit confusing. Although distal sounds a lot like distance and distal means away from, proximal means close to. So when we start to look at the way we describe patients and their anatomy, distal means farther away from the center of the body. So my foot would be distal to my knee or my hip. It's farther away from my body and we describe it as distal. My hip would be proximal to my knee. It's closer to the middle of the body. So I use the term proximal to suggest that it's again, closer to the middle of the body versus farther away. My fingers would be distal to my wrist. My wrist would be distal to my elbow, but my shoulder would be proximal to my elbow. So again, the more you practice the terms and kind of see the terms and use the terms, the easier it will be to kind of understand what they mean and what they, more importantly, what they describe as far as location. The next set is also, again, terms that sort of describe location or descriptive terms. So something that starts with, it's usually a prefix, endo means inside layer. So endoscopy would mean a scope inside the body or inside a portion of the body, inside scope, endoscopy, endo, inside. We use it for the heart. We use the term endomyocardium would be inside the heart muscle, myo being muscle and cardium being heart inside the heart muscle. Ecto means outside. So when, and you can think about that, you actually take it back to, I'm just gonna try to give you a little pearls to remember these things. If you go back to your science days in biology, our ectoplasm was the outside layer, or we have different insects that have hard outside shells, and we would term that outside layer as the ecto portion of their body. Peri is around. And the best way to remember that is the pericardium is a sheath or an outer covering on around the heart. So peri, around. Infra means below. Inter means between. So when I'm infra, then I'm below, like infrarenal means below. Inferior vena cava means below. I'm coming from below. Superior means coming from above. So actually don't have it on here, but supra is another good term is coming from above. Inter means between. Intra is another inside. So like I've mentioned endo already, intra is another term for inside and extra is a term for outside. So another way we like to create confusion is to have two words that mean the same thing. So even more for you to remember, but this'll be another set of terms that'll be important for you to maybe even have a reference for. So when you, cause you'll see them in the reports. We use these terms to describe different portions of the heart muscle or different parts of the body as far as where those portions tend to fall, whether they're inside, outside, around, that kind of thing. And then of course the numbers. So there's a whole set related to one to 10 of the different numbers we use or descriptors or prefixes, if you will, for our terms, mono, di, tri, tetra, penta, hexa, hepta, octa, nano, and deca. And then there's the hyper, which means too much. Hypo means too little. So I'll give you an example. Hypertension means a blood pressure that's too high. Hypotension is a blood pressure that's too low. So when you see that suffix at the beginning, I'm sorry, prefix at the beginning of a word, you can think about it as too much or too little, hyper versus hypo. And then another one we like to use in cardiology are terms that refer to times. So paroxysmal equals intermittent. And when you, one of the areas you're going to see this commonly used is for your patients that have atrial fibrillation. When they describe paroxysmal atrial fibrillation, it means that the atrial fibrillation comes and goes. It's intermittent. Nocturnal means it happens at nighttime. And diurnal means it happens during the day. So you'll sometimes see a description of symptoms described as nocturnal dyspnea, which dyspnea I'm going to show you in just a minute is shortness of breath. That's shortness of breath that happens at night. And there's a reason that sometimes patients get that. So let's talk about those symptoms. So dyspnea is shortness of breath. Thopnea, and you'll see common P-N-E-A is in common in both of these, stands for breath. Orthopnea means shortness of breath when laying flat. And you can kind of think of ortho as flat. So orthopnea, shortness of breath when I lay flat. Paroxysmal nocturnal dyspnea. Now, if we were in a live classroom, I would have you tell me what you think this means because we just went through these terms. Paroxysmal means intermittent. Nocturnal means night. And dyspnea means shortness of breath. So it's shortness of breath that happens at night. And it's sudden and it's intermittent. It doesn't always happen. Then there's syncope, passing out. In some areas of the country, you might hear of falling out, but syncope is passing out. And then nausea, feeling like you're going to vomit. And you'll see the kind of terms nausea and vomiting. Nausea means I feel like I have to. Vomiting means I actually did. So nausea, that's another important one. Emesis is another term for vomiting. Paresthesia is a term for numbness and tingling. So sometimes we'll describe paresthesias kind of as numbness and tingling in our fingers or toes or different parts of our bodies. Fatigue, it's a fancy word for feeling tired. And then malaise is just feeling uncomfortable. It's kind of a generalized feeling of discomfort or feeling uncomfortable. But when someone just says it kind of just aches all over or I feel uncomfortable all over, we term that as malaise. And then palpitations is a common one. That's really when patients describe their chest fluttering or their heart fluttering or any sort of kind of almost... Some people describe it as butterflies. Other people say it feels like my heart is skipping a beat. The term is palpitations, is what we use when we describe those symptoms. And then a few more terms that I will say as a repeat of what we learned in our anatomy and physiology module, but remember systole or systolic. Systole means contract. Diastole means relax. Ejection fraction is the percent of blood volume ejected from the left ventricle during systole. Coronary means of the heart, but remember there's now there's two because there's also cardio. So there's cardio and coronary. And then infarction means local death of tissue. So remember when I described myocardial infarction, you should now be able to break that down to what it really means. So remember myo is muscle, cardio is heart, and infarction is local death of the tissue. So it's muscle, heart, death of tissue, or heart attack, or a portion of the heart that died because it wasn't getting enough oxygen. So myocardial infarction. So see how that works? We just kind of string them all together and begin to describe what's going on with our patients. Few more terms you're gonna see. So ablation really means take away or remove. And there are a number of procedures done specifically in our electrophysiology space described as ablations, where they go in and take away or remove an abnormal heart rhythm. We term that ablation. Valvular I mentioned already is of the valve. When we talked about those different valves, valvular is describing those valves or an abnormality related to those valves. Itis is infection of. So let me give you another term, endocarditis. This is another abnormality or disease we'll see with some of our patients. If you break that down, itis is infection, endo is inside, card is heart. So it's infection inside the heart, endocarditis. See how it works? I think it's kind of fun. I enjoy kind of putting all the terms together. And you'll see that there are a certain number of patients that because of their different factors can get infections on their heart valves. And that's an infection that's now inside the heart. And we term that endocarditis. Isis is a condition of. So it just means there's something abnormal. It doesn't suggest it's infection. It could be inflammation. And this is a suffix. When you see it at the end of the term, it's related to a condition of that organ or condition of that system. And then the final one is apathy, which is just a Latin term for abnormality. And again, when you see it at the end of a term, so retinopathy, retinas of the eye, apathy is abnormality. When a patient has a retinopathy, it's an abnormality of the eye. So again, when you see that, typically you'll see that as a suffix or the second half of the word. And then the last piece I wanna cover here is the abbreviations. And I'm not gonna read you all these abbreviations on this do not use list because what I wanna do is have you go back and ask for your local organization do not use list. So what has happened over decades? And I've been working in healthcare for over 25 years now. With our crazy terminology and words, we have developed shorthand and we like to do abbreviations for things. So not only do we use strange words, but we use abbreviations. And sometimes the abbreviations don't even look like the word that we're looking to have them use. Like QD means daily. I can sort of understand daily from the D, but I'm actually not even sure what the Q stands for. I'm sure there's a meaning there, but QD means daily. And what has happened is we, over our years of just kind of understanding patient safety, have realized that a number of these abbreviations have created areas of confusion and areas where we could potentially have patient safety events. Now, the good news, because 99% of our documentation now is all electronic. And in some cases it's dropped down boxes and things and sort of forced us not to use these abbreviations any longer, but anywhere where you're free typing or any potential opportunity for handwriting, there's just certain abbreviations we have learned over the years not to use. And I believe just about every organization would have a do not use list. And I just wanted you to be aware. Number one, we like to abbreviate things, but number two, there is a list that is important that you don't use because they create confusion for documentation and communication with each other. So this would be an example of a do not use list. Your homework out of this is to go back to your organization and find out what their do not use list and make sure that you're aware so that when you do document things that you're not using those particular abbreviations. Now that we're at the end, if you have any questions, please feel free again, reach out to your preceptor. But if you both have questions, let us know at academy at medaxium.com and we'll be happy to answer any questions you may have. So thank you very much for your time today.

medical terminology

cardiovascular terms

anatomy

direction descriptors

location terms