This assignment involves identifying and defining medical terms. Two paragraphs will be presented below.

Read them and identify all medical terms they contain. After identifying the terms from the text, please define them.

You are to find ten medical terms in each paragraph (total of twenty terms—10 from 1st paragraph and 10 from 2nd paragraph.

A 52-year old man with chronic renal failure secondary to long-standing hypertension has been maintained on hemodialysis for the past 18 months. For the past three weeks during the dialysis sessions, he had become moderately hypotensive, with symptoms of vertigo. Consequently, we have decided to withhold his antihypertensive medications prior to dialysis.

Poly Smith has a history of lower back pain associated with hematuria and dysuria. She has an appointment at the hospital for investigation of her symptoms. Tests include an intravenous pyelogram and cystoscopy. The findings of these tests confirmed the diagnosis of renal calculus. Lithotripsy was recommended, and her prognosis is favorable.

 

1st paragraph:

1. Chronic
2. Renal
3. Failure
4. Secondary
5. Hypertension
6. Hemodialysis
7. Hypotensive
8. Symptoms
9. Vertigo
10. Antihypertensive

2nd paragraph:

1. Hematuria
2. Dysuria
3. Intravenous
4. Pyelogram
5. Cystoscopy
6. Diagnosis
7. Calculus
8. Lithotripsy
9. Prognosis
10. Favorable

Step-by-step explanation

1st paragraph:

1. Chronic - This refers to conditions that have been going for a prolonged period of time. Depending on the condition, there are different cut-offs to determine chronicity. Cough of three weeks is already considered chronic, while for renal failure, it takes years.
2. Renal - This is another term for kidney.
3. Failure - This refers to when organs of the body cease to function properly. Failure may be associated with the heart, respiratory system, the liver, or the kidneys.
4. Secondary - This term is used to show the association with a primary condition with its identified secondary cause. An example would be congestive heart failure secondary to ischemic heart disease.
5. Hypertension - This refers to an elevation in blood pressure. Current guidelines set the cut-off for hypertension to greater than or equal to 120/80 mmHg.
6. Hemodialysis - This refers to the process of removing the blood from the vessels to take out the waste products such as creatine and urea that have accumulated, and transfusing this blood back into the body. This is typically employed in patients who suffered from great degrees of renal failure where their own kidneys cannot filter the blood and excrete the nitrogenous wastes anymore.
7. Hypotensive - This refers to a decrease in blood pressure to values less than 90/60 mmHg.
8. Symptoms - This refers to the patient's subjective complaints with regards to a disease process. (Signs are objective findings and can be directly observed by the examiner.)
9. Vertigo - This refers to a sense of spinning of the head or other motions which may be physiological or pathological. Physiological causes of vertigo include the spinning sensation after prolonged head rotation, while pathological causes include those due to vestibular dysfunction.
10. Antihypertensive - This refers to interventions done to counter the increase in blood pressure. These typically require the use of medications targeting the different contributors of the blood pressure.

I wasn't sure if you could repeat the terms or combine it with the same terms, but if it's allowed, here's the definition for renal failure and chronic renal failure.

Renal failure - This is defined by impairment of the kidney's filtration and excretory functions. This may be acute, occurrring over days to weeks, or chronic.

Chronic renal failure - This is otherwise known as chronic kidney disease. This occurs when the kidney functions are already abnormal and are associated with a progressive decline in the glomerular filtration rate (GFR), one of the measures of kidney function.

2nd paragraph:

1. Hematuria - This refers to red blood cells in the urine commonly seen in infections or other causes of kidney injury. (Hemoglobinuria, on the other hand, refers to hemoglobin in the urine, meaning the red blood cells have already lysed.)
2. Dysuria - This refers to pain on urinating, commonly seen in infections or the passage of kidney stones.
3. Intravenous - This refers to interventions done through the venous system. Medications or contrast agents are typically injected into the veins for it to circulate throughout the body.
4. Pyelogram - This is a radiologic imaging modality used to evaluate the urinary system, which consists of the kidneys, ureters, and bladder. An intravenous pyelogram is done by injecting contrast material into the veins to further enhance the image produced by the pyelogram.
5. Cystoscopy - This is an endoscopic examination of the urinary bladder carried out with a cystoscope, which is a small tube with a camera that is inserted into the urethra.
6. Diagnosis - This refers to the condition identified by healthcare professionals as the cause for the patient's signs and symptoms. In some severely ill patients, multiple diagnoses may be present.
7. Calculus - This is the medical term given to the stones found in the body. Commonly locations of calculus formation include the kidney and the gall bladder.
8. Lithotripsy - This is a medical intervention for the treatment of renal stones, wherein shockwaves or a laser is used to destroy or break down the stones into smaller particles, allowing it to be passed out into the urine.
9. Prognosis - This refers to the prediction of how a disease will progress over time. Medical professionals determine a patient's prognosis depending on the patient's presentation and current research studies on disease progression.
10. Favorable - In relation to prognosis, a favorable outcome refers to when the patient has a greater likelihood of improving over time, thus resulting in an increased survival.