Kidney and Urinary System Terms

A bacterium that frequently causes lung, urinary tract, intestinal, and wound infections.

A reference range shows what is usual in a healthy population, not what suits one person, so a flagged result is not automatically abnormal.

A chronic, inflammatory, connective tissue disease that can affect the joints and many organs, including the skin, heart, lungs, kidneys, and nervous system.

Destructive growth of lymph cells, usually involving the lungs, skin, kidneys, and central nervous system.

A single antibody churned out in bulk by one clone of cells, showing up as a narrow spike on a laboratory trace.

A fibrous cord that connects the urinary bladder to the umbilicus (navel).

A drug used to relieve certain side effects caused by treatment with opiods (pain killers similar to morphine), such as constipation (hard, dry stools), itching, and low urine flow.

Scattered patches of damage explain the scattered symptoms, since what a person notices depends entirely on which pathway has been hit.

A substance that is used in cancer research to cause bladder tumors in laboratory animals.

A nephrectomy is surgery to remove all or part of a kidney, performed through several different approaches depending on how much tissue must be removed.

A physician for the kidney as a chemical regulator rather than as a piece of plumbing, which is where the surgeon takes over.

Pressure rather than pain is the danger, since urine that cannot escape backs up and injures the kidney quickly.

A series of x-rays of the kidneys.

Nephrotoxic describes a substance capable of damaging the kidneys, a property considered when prescribing certain medications or evaluating toxic exposures.

Surgery to remove a kidney and its ureter.

Surgery to remove part of the bladder (the organ that holds urine).

Kidney tissue does not grow back, and keeping more of it lowers the chance of kidney trouble years after the cancer is gone.

Surgery to remove the lower colon, rectum, and bladder, and create stomata (openings) through which urine and stool are passed out of the body.

An oral drug for long-term bladder pain, thought to patch the protective coating that keeps urine off the bladder wall.

Symptoms of this tumor often occur in sudden episodes rather than continuously, reflecting bursts of hormone release rather than a steady excess.