Medical Facts You May Not Know

Did you Know?

1. Your eyes blink around 20 times a minute. That’s over ten million times a year!
2. Your ears never stop growing!
3. Earwax is actually a type of sweat!
4. The tongue is covered in about 8,000 taste-buds, each containing up to 100 cells helping you taste your food!
5. You produce about 40,000 litres of spit in your lifetime. Or to put it another way, enough spit to fill around five hundred bathtubs – yuck!
6. The average nose produces about a cupful of nasal mucus every day!
7. You are about 1cm taller in the morning when you first get up than when you go to bed. This is because during the day the soft cartilage between your bones gets squashed and compressed.
8. If you walked for 12 hours a day, it would take the average person 690 days to walk around the world.
9. The only muscle that never tires is the heart.
10. The entire surface of your skin is replaced every month, which put another way means you have about 1,000 different skins in your life!
11. The body has 2.5 million sweat pores.
12. Every minute you shed over 30,000 dead skin cells.
13. If you live to age 70, your heart will have beat around 2.5 billion times!
14. Spread across their lifetime, most people spend an average of one whole year sitting on the toilet.
15. On average you fart enough in one day to fill a party balloon.
16. We wee enough wee every month to fill a bath!

Medical abbreviations and acronyms

There are many more medical acronyms and abbreviations than what’s listed below.

55. ALS: Advanced life support.
56. Bl wk: Blood work.
57. BMI: Body mass index, a measure of body fat based on height and weight.
58. BP: Blood pressure.
59. CPR: Cardiopulmonary resuscitation, a life-saving technique that’s also called mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
60. C-spine: Cervical spine.
62. DNR: Do not resuscitate, a medical order indicating providers should not perform CPR.
63. ED/ER: Emergency department or emergency room.
64. EKG: Electrocardiogram, a way of monitoring the heart and testing for problems.
65. HDL-C: High-density lipoprotein cholesterol, often called “good” cholesterol.
66. HR: Heart rate, expressed as beats per minute.
67. LDL-C: Low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, often called “bad” cholesterol.
68. Lytes: Electrolytes.
69. NICU: Neonatal intensive care unit, a specialized unit that cares for premature infants.
70. OR: Operating room where surgeries are performed.
71. Pre-op: Preoperative.
72. Psych: Refers to psychiatry or the psychiatric ward.
73. PT: Physical therapy, a type of treatment to help patients move and feel better.
74. Rx: Prescription, usually for medication but can also signify another treatment.
75. Stat: Immediately.

Medical root words

Finding the medical root words is very exciting. Some medical root words are intuitive simply based on your experiences.

43. Cardi/o: Related to the heart.
44. Derm/a/o, dermat/o: Pertaining to the skin.
45. Encephal/o: Related to the brain.
46. Gastr/o: Related to the stomach.
47. Hemat/o: Pertaining to blood.
48. My/o: Related to muscle.
49. Oste/o: Related to bone.
50. Pulmon/o: Refers to the lungs.
51. Rhin/o: Related to the nose.
52. Sclerosis: Hard or hardening.
53. Stasis: Slowing or stopping the flow of a bodily fluid.
54. Therm/o: Indicates heat.

Medical prefixes and suffixes

Medical terminology follows the same structural rules all language does, including use of prefixes and suffixes. You may be familiar with some of these from words outside the realm of medicine.

25. A-, an-: Lack of or without.
26. -ation: Indicates a process.
27. Dys-: Abnormal, difficult, or painful.
28. -ectomy: Surgical removal of something.
29. -ismus: Indicates a spasm or contraction.
30. -itis: Signifies inflammation.
31. -lysis: Decomposition, destruction, or breaking down.
32. Macro-: Large in size.
33. Melan/o-: Black or dark in color.
34. Micro-: Small in size.
35. -ology: The study of a particular concentration.
36. -osis: Indicates something that is abnormal.
37. -otomy: To cut into.
38. -pathy: Disease or disease process.
39. -plasty: Surgical repair.
40. Poly-: Many.
41. Pseudo-: False or deceptive, usually in regard to appearance.
42. Retro-: Behind or backward.

Important Medical Terms

1. Abrasion: A cut or scrape that typically isn’t serious.
2. Abscess: A tender, fluid-filled pocket that forms in tissue, usually due to infection.
3. Acute: Signifies a condition that begins abruptly and is sometimes severe, but the duration is short.
4. Benign: Not cancerous.
5. Biopsy: A small sample of tissue that’s taken for testing.
6. Chronic: Signifies a recurring, persistent condition like heart dsease.
7. Contusion: A bruise.
8. Defibrillator: A medical device that uses electric shocks to restore normal heartbeat.
9. Edema: Swelling caused by fluid accumulation.
10. Embolism: An arterial blockage, often caused by a blood clot.
11. Epidermis: The outer layer of the skin.
12. Fracture: Broken bone or cartilage.
13. Gland: An organ or tissue that produces and secretes fluids that serve a specific function.
14. Hypertension: High blood pressure.
15. Inpatient: A patient who requires hospitalization.
16. Intravenous: Indicates medication or fluid that’s delivered by vein.
17. Malignant: Indicates the presence of cancerous cells.
18. Outpatient: A patient who receives care without being admitted to a hospital.
19. Prognosis: The predicated outcome of disease progression and treatment.
20. Relapse: Return of disease or symptoms after a patient has recovered.
21. Sutures: Stitches, which are used to join tissues together as they heal.
22. Transplant: The removal of an organ or tissue from one body that is implanted into another.
23. Vaccine: A substance that stimulates antibody production to provide immunity against disease.
24. Zoonotic disease: A disease that is transmissible from animals to humans.