Medical terms beginning with C

This antihistamine relieves allergy symptoms and itching, and is also used off label to stimulate appetite and to counteract excess serotonin activity.

A sac or capsule in the body.

Depending on the organ involved, a cystectomy may mean either removing the entire urinary bladder or removing a cyst from a different organ.

A tube that carries bile from the gall bladder.

A common hereditary disease in which exocrine (secretory) glands produce abnormally thick mucus.

Removing the bladder means inventing a replacement for it, and that reconstruction shapes recovery more than the removal does.

A leaf-patterned breast tumor carrying an alarming old name that describes neither its usual behavior nor its true nature.

Rigid or flexible: the choice of instrument decides whether the look inside happens in a clinic room or an operating room.

Ultrasound and CT show the bladder wall from outside; only a look inside reveals flat patches of abnormal lining.

Surgery to remove the bladder (the organ that holds urine) and urethra (the tube through which urine leaves the body).

A form of the anticancer drug cytarabine that is contained inside very tiny, fat-like particles.

A group of enzymes involved in drug metabolism and found in high levels in the liver.

The study of chromosomes and chromosomal abnormalities.

Cytokines are small signaling proteins that immune cells release to coordinate inflammation and communication between cells during infection or injury.

Cytology is the microscopic examination of individual cells, commonly used to screen for abnormal or cancerous changes such as in a Pap test.

Cytomegalovirus is a common herpesvirus that usually causes no symptoms in healthy people but can produce serious illness during pregnancy or immune suppression.

A shortage of one or more blood cell types, given a different name depending on which line has run low.

If the nucleus is the archive, this is the factory floor, and pathologists read the two compartments against each other as a ratio.

Written as C in a sequence, it always sits opposite G, and it carries the chemical tag that can quiet a gene.

Cytotoxic describes something that damages cells or causes cell death.