Medical terms beginning with E

A loose label stretched across two unrelated drug strategies: occupying the receptor, or shutting off the supply of the hormone upstream.

A hormone receptor that works as a gene switch, so blocking it changes what a cell builds rather than merely what it senses.

Describes cells that do not have a protein to which the hormone estrogen will bind.

A result that reads like a label but works as a prediction, since it forecasts which treatments a tumor is likely to answer.

A lab test to find out if cancer cells have estrogen receptors (proteins to which estrogen will bind).

Hormones given to postmenopausal women or to women who have had their ovaries surgically removed.

A substance that comes from a type of sea squirt and is being studied in the treatment of cancer.

An injection of ethanol (alcohol) through the skin directly into a tumor to kill cancer cells.

The hard cases are hard because two sound principles point in opposite directions, not because anyone has done something wrong.

A final personal message or document in which a person shares his or her thoughts, values, memories, life lessons, advice, and hopes for the future.

A form of poppy seed oil that contains iodine.

A type of paranasal sinus (a hollow space in the bones around the nose).

The property that sterilizes is the property that harms, since the gas reacts with DNA whether that DNA belongs to a microbe or a person.

A drug that belongs to the family of drugs called bisphosphonates.

Diagnosis names what a condition is; etiology names what produced it, and the two answers can be separated by decades of research.

Eucalyptus oil is a plant derived ingredient added in small amounts to cough drops and chest rubs, though the concentrated oil is toxic if swallowed.

On its own the word describes a mood, not a diagnosis; what matters clinically is what produced it and how long it lasts.

An ultrasound probe carried down the gullet on a scope, close enough to image organs the skin hides.

A procedure to take a sample of tissue for examination under a microscope.

Intention is what the definitions turn on, which is why several superficially similar practices near the end of life are classified separately.