Medical terms beginning with C

An uncontrollable urge to say or do something without an obvious reason.

A method to examine the inside of the colon by taking a series of x-rays.

A scan that builds a walk-through view of the large bowel from x-ray slices, avoiding the camera but not the preparation.

A plain x-ray flattens the body into one picture, while slicing it apart separates structures that would otherwise be stacked on top of each other.

A series of detailed pictures of areas inside the body taken from different angles.

The scanner captures no picture at all; it records absorption from thousands of angles, and the image is calculated afterward.

Conception marks the biological beginning of pregnancy, occurring when a sperm cell fertilizes an egg to form a single new cell.

A flag for something running alongside the matter at hand, most often another illness or another drug.

A treatment that is given at the same time as another.

A problem of brain function rather than brain structure, which is why the scan comes back normal and the person does not.

Condition is a broad medical term for any recognizable health state, whether a brief illness, a lasting disease, or a physical trait of its own.

A situation in which one signal, or stimulus, is given just before another signal.

Soft warty growths on genital or anal skin, caused by types of a common virus that rarely lead to cancer.

Surgery to remove a cone-shaped piece of tissue from the cervix and cervical canal.

How fast it came on carries more diagnostic weight than how severe it looks, since speed separates a reversible cause from a lasting one.

A condition or trait present at birth.

A type of kidney tumor that is usually found before birth by ultrasound or within the first 3 months of life.

An inherited disorder in which there is a lower-than-normal number of neutrophils (a type of white blood cell that is important in fighting infections).

The word failure misleads, since the heart keeps beating; what fails is the match between its output and what the body needs.

Removal of a cone of cervix that doubles as test and treatment, taking the abnormal area and the diagnosis away in one piece.