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Medical slang is the use of acronyms and informal terminology to describe patients, other healthcare personnel and medical concepts. Some terms are pejorative. In English, medical slang has entered popular culture via television hospital and forensic science dramas such as ER, House M.D., NCIS, Scrubs, and Grey's Anatomy, and through fiction, in books such as The House of God by Samuel Shem ...
The main discussion of these abbreviations in the context of drug prescriptions and other medical prescriptions is at List of abbreviations used in medical prescriptions. Some of these abbreviations are best not used, as marked and explained here.
Second, medical roots generally go together according to language, i.e., Greek prefixes occur with Greek suffixes and Latin prefixes with Latin suffixes. Although international scientific vocabulary is not stringent about segregating combining forms of different languages, it is advisable when coining new words not to mix different lingual roots.
This is a list of abbreviations used in medical prescriptions, including hospital orders (the patient-directed part of which is referred to as sig codes). This list does not include abbreviations for pharmaceuticals or drug name suffixes such as CD, CR, ER, XT (See Time release technology § List of abbreviations for those).
Meaning Δ: diagnosis; change: ΔΔ: differential diagnosis (the list of possible diagnoses, and the effort to narrow that list) +ve: positive (as in the result of a test) # fracture: #NOF: fracture to the neck of the femur ℞ (R with crossed tail) prescription: Ψ: psychiatry, psychosis: Σ: sigmoidoscopy: x/12: x number of months x/40: x ...
Abbreviations are used very frequently in medicine. They boost efficiency as long as they are used intelligently. The advantages of brevity should be weighed against the possibilities of obfuscation (making the communication harder for others to understand) and ambiguity (having more than one possible interpretation).
Meaning s̅: without (s with an overbar) (from Latin sine) S: sacrum: S x: symptoms surgery (though deemed by some as inappropriate) S 1: first heart sound: S 2: second heart sound: S 3: third heart sound S 4: fourth heart sound S&O: salpingo-oophorectomy Sb: Scholar batch SAAG: serum–ascites albumin gradient SAB: staphylococcal bacteremia
Zebra is the American medical slang for a surprising, often exotic, medical diagnosis, especially when a more commonplace explanation is more likely. It is shorthand for the aphorism coined in the late 1940s by Theodore Woodward, professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, who instructed his medical interns: "When you hear hoofbeats behind you, don't expect to see a zebra."