Medical Terminology – Prefixes
Welcome to part one of my new series for February, helping you in understanding medical terminology, prefixes, suffixes and the history of medical language. This will not be an exhaustive list of terms, as there are hundreds of them and it can be a lot to remember. That said, I want to make it easy to understand how and why medical terms are written and used the way they are.
To start with, anyone who has studied medicine of any kind will inadvertently end up learning some Greek and Latin. Most of the medical terms we use are rooted in these languages. Hippocrates is considered the father of modern medicine, after all.
Generally you will stick to all Greek or all Latin terms together. For fun, here’s a few terms you may have heard of and what they mean. I will clarify in parentheses whether a word is Greek, Latin or something else.
- Laparotomy: incision into the abdominal cavity (Greek)
- Enteropathy: disease of the intestines (Greek)
- Nephritis: inflammation of the kidney (Greek)
- Renal failure: kidney failure (Latin)
- Jaundice: yellow discolouration due to excessive bilirubin in the blood (French!)
So you can see that there are often two different terms for the one organ or body system. So let’s get into it, starting with some prefixes. Please note I use British English spellings throughout, so if you are familiar with US English, a few things might be spelt differently.
Medical Prefixes
These are used to describe something about the word root in question. Prefixes go at the beginning of the word or phrase, just like any other. Some of them may be more obvious than others, but others can get confusing.
Hypo vs Hyper
One that loads of people get mixed up is a pair of prefixes that have opposite meanings. ‘Hypo-‘ means deficient or abnormally low such as in ‘hypothermia’ meaning low body temperature. ‘Hyper-‘ means too much or above normal such as ‘hyperthermia’ or high body temperature. They can get confused because they sound similar when spoken aloud.
Remember: ‘hypo’ means low. So you can have hypotension, low blood pressure or hypertension, high blood pressure. Hypothyroidism means an underactive thyroid (thyroid function is low) while hyperthyroidism means an overactive thyroid (thyroid function is high).
It’s very important to know which one is happening with a patient, such as with blood glucose (blood sugar). Let’s break this down:
‘Hypo-‘ means too low. ‘-glyc-‘ means glucose. ‘-aemia’ means in the blood. So ‘hypoglycaemia’ means low blood sugar, so you’d treat that with a sugary drink or snack. Insulin reduces blood sugar so if you gave that, it would get worse! This could be fatal for the patient, hence the need for certainty.
‘Hyper-‘ means too high, so ‘hyperglycaemia’ means the blood sugar level is too high so it might need treatment with insulin to bring it down. Giving sugar won’t help the situation here. See how that works? These terms are Greek in origin.
Another pair of opposing prefixes are a bit easier to tell apart. ‘Tachy-‘ means ‘too fast’ so tachycardia would be an abnormally fast heart rate. ‘Brady-‘ is the opposite of this and means ‘too slow’ so bradycardia would be an abnormally slow heart rate. These also come from Greek.
It’s Not All In Your Head
‘Soma’ means ‘body’. So ‘somatic’ means relating to the body in some way and can be a prefix or suffix. You may have heard the term ‘psychosomatic’ but the meaning of this is often misunderstood. ‘Psycho-‘ means of the mind, and ‘somatic’ of the body. Some people take this to mean that the doctor thinks your physical symptoms are all in your head but that’s not correct.
Again, these are Greek in origin and you might have played a game called SOMA which covers some important issues around the body and mind and the relationship between them.
Some doctors dismiss patient’s symptoms as being imagined, or blame anxiety. But ‘psychosomatic’ actually means that mental health problems cause physical symptoms in your body. So they are quite real, but the source of the symptoms is a mental health issue.
A clear example is a panic attack: a racing heart and hyperventilating (breathing excessively). These physical symptoms are caused by an anxiety disorder. They are quite real, but the cause is mental, not physical.
Monster!
Another one that is interesting is ‘terato-‘ meaning ‘monster’. What does that have to do with medicine? There’s a tumour called a ‘teratoma’ which literally means monstrous tumour. This is a growth that is made up of several types of tissue: often including hair, bones, teeth and muscle tissue.
They originate from ‘germ cells’ which have the ability to differentiate into different types of cells so often the tumours develop in the gonads: ovaries and testes. They are bizarre looking things, for sure. Named because they often possess hair and teeth and thus look like some kind of bizarre monster.
Medical Prefixes
There are lots of prefixes, which are related to specific things like colour, position, organ and quantity which we will cover later this month. Next week we’ll be tackling the suffixes of medical terminology so you can start putting them together. I hope you’ll come back for that, and I hope you’ve found this useful for beginning to understand medical terminology. It’s a huge topic. I’m here to make it easier for you.
Any questions or thoughts, let me know! I’m always happy to help and to chat about this topic in more detail. For more, check out my series ‘Creature Features’ covering some animal related topics, like the fight or flight response. For a video format of this article, see my new YouTube Channel here.
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