Disease and Disorder Terms

An obstructed appendix becomes a closed space under rising pressure, which is what makes the illness progress rather than settle.

An abnormality in the rate or rhythm of the heartbeat.

A disease that causes inflammation and pain in the joints.

Scarring, not cancer: this is the fibrotic lung disease of asbestos exposure, and it is diagnosed separately from mesothelioma.

Comparing the albumin in the fluid against the albumin in blood sorts the possible causes into two groups more reliably than symptoms do.

Aspergillosis is a fungal infection caused by Aspergillus mold that most often affects the lungs, particularly in people with a weakened immune system.

Two problems run together here: inflammation that smolders between attacks and muscle spasm that closes the airway during one.

Inflammation of the prostate gland where the only symptom is the presence of white blood cells in the prostate fluid.

Often confused with a punctured lung, this is airless lung tissue rather than air escaped into the chest around it.

The sudden events, heart attack and most strokes, come less from slow narrowing than from a plaque tearing open and triggering a clot.

The two upper chambers stop beating and start quivering, and the pulse that results is irregular in a way nothing else quite copies.

A condition in which the body recognizes its own tissues as foreign and directs an immune response against them.

An autoimmune condition of the thyroid gland (a gland located beneath the larynx).

This condition replaces the esophagus's normal lining with a different cell type after long term acid reflux, and carries a modestly increased cancer risk.

A genetic condition that causes unusual facial features and disorders of the skin, bones, nervous system, eyes, and endocrine glands.

A rare, overgrowth disorder in which babies are large at birth and may develop low blood sugar.

A common condition marked by benign (not cancer) changes in breast tissue.

An inherited trio of skin bumps, lung cysts and kidney tumors, most often noticed when a lung suddenly collapses.

Bloom syndrome is a rare inherited disorder causing short stature and a sun sensitive facial rash, with a markedly increased cancer risk.

Bloom-Torre-Machacek syndrome is the full clinical name for Bloom syndrome, a rare inherited disorder marked by short stature and elevated cancer risk.