Digestive System and Nutrition Terms

A surgical procedure in which the colon is attached to the anus after the rectum has been removed.

A surgical procedure in which the colon is attached to the anus after the rectum has been removed.

Contents can spend a day or more here, which is what makes the colon the place where water is reclaimed and bacteria flourish.

Few cancers offer such a long warning: the polyp stage lasts years, and removing one prevents the cancer that would have followed.

Tube-like gland found in the lining of the colon and rectum.

A colon polyp is an abnormal growth on the inner lining of the colon that is usually benign but occasionally becomes cancerous.

A thin, tube-like instrument used to examine the inside of the colon.

The only bowel test that both finds a polyp and removes it, which is why it prevents cancer rather than merely detecting it.

Colorectal describes anything relating to the colon and rectum together, the final segments of the large intestine, most often in the context of cancer.

Because a polyp usually takes years to turn malignant, this is one of the few cancers screening can prevent rather than merely find early.

An opening into the colon from the outside of the body.

The common bile duct is the tube through which bile travels from the liver and gallbladder into the small intestine.

One short segment of the plumbing that drains bile, defined entirely by the two junctions at either end of it.

The word places all responsibility on one side of a two-sided relationship, which is precisely why it fell out of favor.

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 substance made by the pancreas.

A pouch formed from a piece of small intestine to hold urine after the bladder has been removed.

A series of x-ray pictures of the esophagus taken after a patient drinks a liquid containing barium sulfate (a form of the silver-white metallic element barium).

A nutrient that the body needs in small amounts to function and stay healthy.