Medical terms beginning with O

Spinal fractures are the most common kind and often pass unnoticed, surfacing later as lost height and a stooped upper back.

The tumor makes bone, which is what gives it away on an X-ray and what separates it from cancer that merely arrived in bone.

An operation to create an opening (a stoma) from an area inside the body to the outside.

OTC identifies a medicine or health product available without a prescription, based on an established safety profile suitable for self-selection and use.

Children are affected far more than adults because the tube ventilating the middle ear is shorter and lies more level.

The specialty is defined by a region of the body rather than by one organ, one disease process or one kind of treatment.

A measure of weight (one-sixteenth pound) and volume (one-eighth cup).

Choosing which result to measure decides what a study is able to claim, which is why the choice is fixed before anyone is enrolled.

A person can spend a night in a hospital bed and still count as an outpatient, because the label tracks admission status rather than hours.

The ovaries sit deep in the pelvis with no surface to feel, so ovarian problems tend to announce themselves indirectly.

Surgery, radiation therapy, or a drug treatment to stop the functioning of the ovaries.

A condition in which cells that may become cancer form in the thin layer of tissue that covers an ovary (female reproductive gland in which eggs are made).

Early symptoms are so ordinary, bloating and pelvic discomfort among them, that the disease is usually advanced when found.

A cancer vaccine comprised of synthetic peptides corresponding to naturally-occurring peptides derived from ovarian cancer cell antigens.

Cancer that occurs in the cells on the surface of the ovary.

An abnormal mass of tissue that forms in germ (egg) cells in the ovary (female reproductive gland in which the eggs are formed).

Surgery, radiation therapy, or a drug treatment to stop the functioning of the ovaries.

One of a pair of female reproductive glands in which the ova, or eggs, are formed.

(Other name for: autologous dinitrophenyl-modified ovarian cancer vaccine)

Medicines a person can buy and choose without a clinician, judged safe enough for self-treatment of problems people can recognize.

Too much thyroid hormone.

The percentage of people in a study or treatment group who are alive for a certain period of time after they were diagnosed with or treated for a disease, such as cancer.

The threshold is not a fixed quantity: body size, kidney and liver function, and whatever else is already on board all move it.

In biology, to make too many copies of a protein or other substance.

A group of genetic disorders in which there is an abnormal increase in the size of the body or a body part that is often noted at birth.

(Other name for: norgestrel)

The second half of the cycle runs to a fairly fixed length, so it is the first half that decides when release happens.

A protein being studied in the treatment of cancer.

This chemotherapy drug is notable for a distinctive nerve related side effect that can be triggered or worsened by exposure to cold.

(Other name for: oxandrolone)

A laboratory-made relative of testosterone shaped to build muscle with less of the male hormone effect.

A substance that blocks the process cells use to repair DNA.

Oxidation is a chemical reaction in which atoms or molecules lose electrons, a process linked in the body to both essential metabolism and cellular damage.

A chemical process in which oxygen is used to make energy from carbohydrates (sugars).

Not simply a shortage of antioxidants but a balance tipped the wrong way, with damage as the result rather than the cause.

An oxide is any compound formed when oxygen chemically combines with another element, a category spanning substances as different as water, rust, and certain plant oils.

To oxidize is to react chemically with oxygen or a similar substance, a process linked in the body to both energy production and cell damage.

(Other name for: 5-hydroxytryptophan)

(Other name for: methoxsalen)

(Other name for: methoxsalen)

Oxycodone hydrochloride is the salt form of oxycodone, an opioid pain reliever prescribed for moderate to severe pain.

The whole design rests on the tablet staying intact, since crushing it converts a slow dose into a large immediate one.

Carrying it is one job and delivering it is another, which is why a normal saturation reading can sit above starving tissue.

A test that measures the amount of oxygen being carried by red blood cells.

Supplemental oxygen given as a treatment for low blood oxygen, delivered at a controlled concentration rather than as much as possible.