Entries tagged with language

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Medical term for today

Bladder Botox

Refers to the procedure described in the code below, in which botulinum toxin (Botox) is injected to paralyze overactive bladder muscles.

New CPT code for 2013:

52287 Cystourethroscopy, with injection(s) for chemodenervation of the bladder

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The presenter also threw around some jargon I hadn't heard before, which I present here for your edification:

GEMs - general equivalence mappings (refers to ICD-9-to-ICD-10 mapping - "general equivalence" seems to be a way of waffling around the fact that it doesn't always work out quite right)

Provider neutrality - refers to rewording that the AMA is doing to clarify that not all work must be done by a physician - this has led to the use of the term "qualified healthcare professional" (abbreviated QHCP or QHP), mostly meaning those people that you sometimes see in lieu of a physician, like physician assistants & nurse-practitioners

And, since this is not everyday jargon for most people, a quick guide to the acronyms:
AMA - American Medical Association
CPT - Current Procedural Terminology (aka procedure codes) - published by the AMA
ICD-9 - International Classification of Diseases, 9th edition (aka diagnosis codes) - to be replaced by ICD-10, the 10th edition, somewhere in the near future (currently scheduled for 10/1/2014, but it's already been changed several times)

Added I would like to note that I got the quiz afterwards (which earns you an extra CEU credit if you pass) 100% right on the first try, and all three of those items (i.e., "bladder botox" and the two bullet-point items) were on it. So I owe my stellar grade partly to the time I spent typing all that out!

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Dictionary of American Regional English (volume 1)

I read somewhere, a couple of weeks ago, about how the last volume of the Dictionary of American Regional English is (finally) being published - the first volume came out in 1985 - and my latent reference librarian suddenly came to the fore and I ended up buying the first volume from Amazon (used). I should never shop online at 4 in the morning, because I needed a big reference book like that like I needed a hole in my head, but at the time it seemed like a huge bargain, and it was, relatively speaking - it was only $17 when the other volumes were $70 and up. So anyway, I thought I would pass along some interesting words and phrases, when I think of it, like I did for the medical terms earlier. It makes me feel more like I'm getting my money's worth if I share.

Here's one I'd never heard (and I'm condensing a bit - this is written with copious examples, sort of like the OED):

California blanket n joc
1926 [Hobo lingo] Newspapers when used for sleeping purposes (as a substitute for bedding)

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Fancy words for everyday things

I found a list that I was compiling somewhere along the line, so for your entertainment, I give you:

Fancy word	Normal word
Pruritis	Itching
Biliary colic	Severe pain from gallstones
Renal colic	Severe pain from kidney stones
Alopecia	Hair loss
Urticaria	Hives
Ecchymosis	Bruising
Pharyngitis	Sore throat
Acute coryza	Cold symptoms
Cerumen	Earwax
Exophthalmos	Bug-eyes
Emesis	Vomiting
Pyrosis	Heartburn
Pyrexia	Fever
Edema	Swelling

This is not near complete, but it gives you a few of them.

Meanwhile I have finally plowed my way through the last chapter of the anatomy book, so all I have to do is review and I'm done there. Meanwhile, I have also started working on the coding material. The second chapter of coding is a review of anatomy and terminology, so maybe I can overlap those and use it to study for my anatomy final!

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The indignant womb

Another nugget of medical history from my anatomy textbook:

Plato believed that the womb (uterus), if unused for a long period, became "indignant." This indignant womb then wandered around the body, inhibiting the body's spirit and causing disease. According to the male thinkers of the day, a woman was so controlled by her wandering womb that she was considered irrational and prone to emotional outbursts and fits of hysteria. This belief was the reason that the womb was named the hystera. The term has persisted in medical terminology...

I knew about the relationship between "hysterectomy" and "hysterics" - if I hadn't, it was pointed out in my Medical Terminology book as well - but what I hadn't heard before was the part about the indignant wandering womb. (However, the Greeks also believed that the arteries carried air, so it's not that their medical knowledge was otherwise all that sophisticated, in any case.)

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Etymology post!

Remember back when I posted the word cryptorchidism and I was all interested in why "orchid" was a root word for testes? Well, apparently I am not the only one interested in that - there's actually a whole "fun facts" box about it in the anatomy book, including exactly who's responsible. Here it is, verbatim:

Do You Know . . .
Why Aristotle called the testicle the orchis?
The root of the orchid plant is olive shaped; in Greek the shape is called an orchis. Noticing the similarity between the shape of the orchid root and the testicles. Aristotle dubbed the testicle orchis. The word orchis is still used in medical terms. For example, orchitis refers to inflammation of the testicles, and orchiectomy refers to the surgical removal of the testicles. The word testis comes from the Latin and means to bear witness to. The word testes shares the same Latin root as the word testify. In ancient Rome, only men could bear witness, or testify. To show the importance of their testimony, the held their testicles as they spoke.

Huh. Well, that's interesting.

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Sunday medical term

edema
abnormal collection of fluid, usually causing swelling

I'm sure a lot of people know this word, but I'm putting it in here anyway because it lets me discuss the mechanisms of edema a little bit, and I thought it was interesting. I like this definition (from the anatomy book) better than the one from the medical terminology book, which was worded the other way around - something on the order of "swelling, usually caused by abnormal collection of fluid in the tissues". The excess fluid arises on a microscopic level, in the interstitium between the capillaries and the cells. Normally the capillaries take out the same volume of fluid that they bring in, keeping things in balance, but when things get out of whack the fluid builds up in the interstitial space and eventually becomes noticeable as swelling. One example the book gave was hypoalbuminemia - a lack of albumin, which is a protein, in the blood. The presence of the proteins in the capillaries - in some mysterious way that I don't entirely understand - draws water back in with them, so a lack of proteins means more water stays in the interstitium.

OK, the page is sort of swimming so I think that means it's my bedtime. Hope this makes a reasonable amount of sense!

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coding,
language

A lesson on renal filtration

... concerning that word from last week. This is mostly for

columbina , who I know was interested!

I have been going around all week saying "glo-MER-u-lar" - this word is just a mouthful before you even get to glo-mer-u-lo-nef-RI-tis. OK, so here is the deal - the glomeruli are tiny capillaries, which are inside the glomerular capsule, which is inside a nephron (which are inside the kidneys, which are inside the peritoneum, and so on and so forth), and they are where one step of the work of filtration takes place. Materials filter through the porous glomerular wall and out into the nephron - this is called the glomerular filtrate - it's water, electrolytes and other nutrients as well as waste materials. Bigger things like proteins can't come through. After it leaves the glomerulus, the liquid filters through long (but itty-bitty) tubes in the nephrons where the things that your body wants - the water and electolytes and so forth - are reabsorbed, leaving only the waste material. That make sense?

Now, as far as glomerulonephritis - if you break it down, that word just means "inflammation of the glomeruli and kidneys" but apparently it has a more specific meaning in actual use. It usually follows an immunologic reaction, often in another body system, and often goes with autoimmune diseases like lupus. I'm not really clear on the mechanism (and probably don't really need to be at this point) but what you end up with is very damaged kidneys, with blood and protein escaping from the nephrons and into the urine. Most people recover from this, but chronic glomerulonephritis can lead to renal failure and the need for dialysis and all of that fun stuff. (Not.)

So there you go, more than you wanted to know about the glomeruli and diseases thereof. You're welcome.

Oh, and also? I have a tendency to write "gnomerulus" which I ascribe entirely to too much WoW. (If you looked closely at the unedited version of this post you know that already.)

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coding,
language

Vocabulary geekery

columbina is confused about the class business, and if he is, I figure somebody else is too, so let me clarify. I'm now taking two, count 'em, two classes:
1. Medical Terminology - I'm about halfway through this one.
2. Anatomy - I'm just starting this one.

They're both online, and there's a lot of overlap between the two, which is good - not only because it makes it easier, but because there's a heck of a lot of new material (to me, anyway) contained therein, so by the time I go over a lot of it twice I'm more likely to actually remember it.

Col and I also spent a bunch of WoW time, between fights, geeking out over vocabulary. Here's one bit I've been having trouble with that I was telling him about, and I'll repeat it all again because the more times I repeat it the more likely I am to remember it, and there are still a couple of these that I tend to forget. Some you'll know, some you probably won't unless you have a background in this stuff.

Suffixes for surgery:
-centesis - puncture, tap (like amniocentesis)
-desis - binding, fusion
-ectomy - excision, surgical removal
-pexy - surgical fixation
-plasty - reconstruction, plastic repair
-rhaphy - surgical repair, suture
-stomy - surgical creation of an opening (colostomy is probably the most common)
-tome - instrument for cutting (incising)
-tomy - incision
-tripsy - crushing (as in a gallstone; lithotripsy is a general term for crushing of a stone)

(Maybe later I'll tell you about the intestines. Right now I'm not in the mood for the ick factor of that one.)