Medical terms A–Z

Transdermal describes a medication delivery method in which a drug passes through unbroken skin into the bloodstream, often using a patch.

A substance being studied in the treatment of brain tumors.

Rarely whole blood any more: a donation is split into parts so each patient receives only the component that is missing.

Stroke symptoms that clear on their own within minutes or hours, carrying far more weight as a warning than their brevity suggests.

When the shaking appears matters far more than how bad it looks, because timing points to which part of the motor system is failing.

The word names a shape of damage rather than a single disease, so its causes run from pressure to infection to cancer.

A description rather than a diagnosis, telling a reader that a surface has been lost and something is stopping it from closing.

One of the commonest reasons for an antibiotic prescription, and a diagnosis that rests on symptoms rather than on a urine test alone.

A rash that behaves unlike most others: each welt lasts hours, fades without a trace, and reappears somewhere else.

A rehearsal for an infection the body has never met, arranged so that the real encounter is answered from memory.

The leg has to move blood uphill against gravity, and once the valves that stop it falling back give way, the vein stretches.

Not the same thing as dizziness or faintness, and the distinction narrows the list of possible causes faster than any test.

A rare, genetic disorder that is present at birth and has two or more of the following symptoms: Wilms tumor (a type of kidney cancer); little or no iris (the colored part of the eye); defects in…

Waldenstrom macroglobulinemia is a slow growing lymphoma marked by excess antibody production that can thicken the blood and impair circulation.

Food, alcohol and dozens of other drugs shift its effect, which is why the dose is set by blood test rather than by body weight.

In surgery, keeping a tissue, organ, or body part at body temperature after its blood suppy has been reduced or cut off.

In surgery, the time a tissue, organ, or body part remains at body temperature after its blood supply has been reduced or cut off but before it is cooled or reconnected to a blood supply.

A raised growth on the surface of the skin or other organ.

The vitamins that dissolve in water and leave in urine, so the body holds only a small working supply of most of them.

A peppery salad leaf grown in running water, repeatedly confused in older references with an unrelated plant of a similar name.