Medical Device and Equipment Terms

A device used to stretch or enlarge an opening.

A camera on the end of a steerable tube, and increasingly the instrument that performs the operation rather than merely finding it.

A tube placed in the esophagus to keep a blocked area open so the patient can swallow soft food and liquids.

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

A feeding route running straight through the abdominal wall, used when swallowing will be unsafe for a long time.

A device that uses a gel to carry an electric current from the skin to a measuring instrument.

Adding water to air only helps within a range, since too little dries the airway and too much feeds mold and dust mites.

A substance or object that is put in the body as a prosthesis, or for treatment or diagnosis.

A procedure used to do a mammogram (x-ray of the breasts) in women with breast implants.

An inhaler delivers medication as a fine mist or powder breathed into the lungs through the mouth, most often for asthma or COPD.

Shrinking a laboratory onto a slide changes the physics as much as the scale, and that is rather the point of it.

It is the eye of keyhole surgery: instruments enter through separate ports, and the whole team operates from one magnified screen image.

A laryngoscope is a lighted instrument used to view the larynx, most often to guide placement of a breathing tube.

Ordinary light spreads out and contains every color; a laser beam holds one wavelength and stays narrow, which is what makes it a tool.

The instrument behind nearly every pathology slide, and one whose limit is set by the wavelength of light itself.

The everyday shorthand used in radiotherapy departments for the machine that produces the treatment beam.

A machine that drives electrons down a straight tube to near the speed of light and turns them into a treatment beam.

A thin, tube-like instrument used to examine the tissues and lymph nodes in the area between the lungs.

Regulatory oversight for medical devices generally scales with risk, so a simple bandage faces far less scrutiny than an implanted pacemaker.

A machine that uses electricity to form a stream of fast-moving subatomic particles.