Medical Glossary

This glossary contains:
19186
medical terms

Cut




Cut

An area of severed skin. Wash a cut or scrape it with soap and water, and keep it clean and dry. Putting alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, or iodine into a wound can delay healing, and should be avoided. Seek medical care if you think you might need stitches, as delay can increase the rate of wound infection. If the cut results from a puncture wound through the shoe, there is a high risk of infection, and you should see your healthcare professional. Redness, swelling, increased pain, and pus draining from the wound also indicate an infection that requires professional care.

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Skin
Skin is an organ of the integumentary system; which is composed of a layer of tissues that protect underlying muscles and organs. Skin is used for insulation, vitamin D production, sensation, and excretion (through sweat).

Alcohol
An organic chemical in which one or more hydroxyl (OH) groups are attached to carbon (C) atoms in place of hydrogen (H) atoms. Common alcohols include ethyl alcohol or ethanol (found in alcoholic beverages), methyl alcohol or methanol (can cause blindness) and propyl alcohol or propanol (used as a solvent and antiseptic). Rubbing alcohol is a mixture of acetone, methyl isobutyl ketone, and ethyl alcohol. In everyday talk, alcohol usually refers to ethanol as, for example, in wine, beer, and liquor. It can cause changes in behavior and be addictive.

Wound
A wound is a physical trauma where the skin is torn, cut or punctured. Exposed to air, there is not only a significant chance of death due to loss of blood, but increased chance of bacteria entering the wound or an infection.

Medical
Pertaining to Medicine.

Infection
Anything that invades the body and reproduces. Infections can be bacteria, protozoa, fungi, or viruses. Bacteria and fungi are one celled creatures that cause many infections including strep throat, bladder infections, and some lung infections. Fungi cause “athlete’s foot” and thrush, an infection in the mouth. Protozoa are small organisms with many cells that can cause infections in the guts or in the lungs. Most healthy people do not get protozoal infections, but people with suppressed immune systems can. Viruses are not really organisms; they are tiny particles that can live only inside another cell. They reproduce by taking over a cell and causing that cell to make more virus particles, rather than doing what the cell is supposed to do. Viruses cause most colds and flu cases.

Puncture
A wound produced by a pointed object.

Risk
In clinical trials, the probability of harm or discomfort for subjects, arising from the test product. Acceptable risk differs depending on the condition for which a product is being tested. A product for sore throat, for example, will be expected to have a low incidence of side effects. However, unpleasant side effects may be an acceptable risk when testing a promising treatment for a life-threatening illness.

Pain
An unpleasant sensory or emotional experience primarily associated with tissue damage, or described in terms of tissue damage, or both.



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Cure
1. To heal, to make well, to restore to good health. Cures are easy to claim and, all too often, difficult to confirm. 2. A time without recurrence of a disease so that the risk of recurrence is small, as in the 5-year cure rate for malignant melanoma. 3. Particularly in the past, a course of treatment.

Curie (Ci)
A unit of radioactivity. (Specifically, the quantity of any radioactive nuclide in which the number of disintegrations per second is 3.7 X 10 to the 10th). Named for Marie and Pierre Curie who did pioneering research in radioactivity, distinguished alpha, beta, and gamma radiation, discovered polonium and radium, and isolated pure radium.

Currarino syndrome
A condition characterized by the combination of: Partial absence of the sacrum (the lowest portion of spine), Anorectal (anal and rectal) abnormalities, and An abnormal mass in front of the sacrum (due to a meningocoele or teratoma).

Cushing syndrome
The constellation of symptoms and signs caused by an excess of cortisol hormone.

Cushingoid
Having the constellation of symptoms and signs caused by an excess of cortisol hormone: that is, Cushing syndrome.

Cut

Cutaneous allodynia
Pain resulting from an innocuous stimulus to normal skin or scalp. The stumulus that triggers allodynia is not normally painful. The pain can be provoked by combing or brushing the hair, shaving, showering, wearing glasses or earrings. The pressure of a single strand of hair reportedly can feel like a jab with a white-hot knife. Cutaneous allodynia is believed due to a transient increase in the responsiveness of central pain neurons that process information arising from the skin. It is commonly associated with migraine.

Cutaneous papilloma
A small tag of skin that may have a stalk (a peduncle). Cutaneous papillomas may appear on the skin almost anywhere although the favorite locales are the eyelids, neck, armpits (axillae), upper chest, and groin.

Cutaneous syndactyly
A condition in which fingers or toes are joined together, and the joining involves only the skin, not the bones. Cutaneous syndactyly is the opposite of bony syndactyly, in which the bones are of the digits are joined.

Cutis
The skin. Cutis marmorata is marble skin, a normal response to cold.

Cutis anserina
Better known as goose bumps, a temporary local change in the skin when it becomes rougher due to erection of little muscles, as from cold, fear, or excitement.

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This dictionary contains 19186 terms.







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