cardiac
Meaning of cardiac: One root with two destinations: nearly always the heart, but occasionally the stomach opening that happens to lie beside it.
Definition of cardiac
Cardiac means relating to the heart. It attaches to anatomy, as in cardiac muscle and cardiac valves, to function, as in cardiac output, and to disease, as in cardiac arrest and cardiac failure. Confusingly, it also names a region of the stomach, the cardia, which sits where the esophagus enters and takes its name from lying near the heart.
How cardiac is built
- cardi/o Combining form · Greek heart
- -ac, -al, -ar, -ary, -eal, -ic Suffix · Greek and Latin pertaining to, relating to
A medical term is read from its ending backwards: the suffix first, then the prefix, then the root. See all 223 word parts.
Where does the word turn up?
It runs through four broad groups. Structure gives cardiac muscle, the involuntary muscle found nowhere else in the body, along with the cardiac chambers, valves and apex. Function gives cardiac output, the volume of blood pumped each minute, and the cardiac cycle, one round of filling and emptying. Disease gives cardiac arrhythmia, cardiac arrest, cardiac tamponade and cardiac failure. Care gives cardiac monitoring, cardiac catheterization, cardiac rehabilitation and the implanted cardiac pacemaker. In every case the word narrows the subject to the heart itself and says nothing about what is wrong with it.
How does cardiac differ from the words built around it?
| Word | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Cardiac | The heart alone |
| Cardiovascular | The heart together with the arteries, veins and capillaries |
| Cardiopulmonary | The heart and the lungs as a working pair |
| Coronary | Only the arteries that supply the heart muscle itself |
These are not interchangeable. A blocked coronary artery is a coronary problem that becomes a cardiac one when heart muscle is damaged, while a cardiovascular risk factor may act on vessels far from the chest.
Why does the stomach have a cardiac region?
The cardia is the short segment of stomach immediately below the point where the esophagus enters, and it was named by anatomists simply because it lies close to the heart. Older texts call the muscular ring there the cardiac sphincter, though it is now more often called the lower esophageal sphincter. Cancers arising in that segment are described as tumors of the gastric cardia. A report using cardiac in this sense is describing the stomach, and the surrounding words are the only thing that makes the difference clear.
Used in a sentence
The patient was admitted for observation and cardiac monitoring after reporting chest discomfort.
Good to know
Cardiac symptoms such as chest discomfort can arise from the heart or from nearby structures including the esophagus, ribs and lungs, so the word marks where a problem is suspected rather than where it has been confirmed.
Word origin
Where “cardiac” comes from
From Greek kardia, meaning heart.