Mind your lingo

Doctors excel at making simple things sound complex and grave by their deft use of terms that sound truely Greek or Latin to our common ears. If, for instance, you go to a doctor with bleeding from the nose, he will diagnose it as “epistaxis”, a word that sounds so ‘propah’, but merely means bleeding from the nose!

Many of the diagnostic terms we hear are therefore words from another language that sounds bombastic but tells what the patient told. if you are running fever, your doctor will label it “pyrexia”, and if it has been going on for more than a couple of weeks, he will call it “pyrexia of unknown origin” or PUO to impress you.

The term “heme” stands for blood (remember hemoglobin that gives blood its red colour) and comes in medical jargon in many avatars. If someone vomits blood, the doctor calls it “hematemesis”, if your piles bleed, he says “hematochezia”, and if your urine contains blood, he will label it as “hematuria” and so on..... Great medical terms but meaning only what the patient described in his own simple way!

Doctors are probably encouraged to use this shroud paradoxiacally, by their patients. When I write “giddiness” in the case file, my patients give me that disappointed “ye to mujhe bhi pata tha” look, but when I write “vertigo”, they feel reassured that this guy knows his stuff!. “Double vision” is therefore “dyplopia”, “night blindness” is “nyctalopia”, skin rash is “exanthema” and running nose “corrhyza”.

Once you know that the Latin word for pain is “algia”, you can tag it to any portion of the body that pains and create your own diagnosis. Painful joints become “arthralgia”, pain in muscles “myalgia”, pain in nerves “neuralgia” and pain in the anus “proctalgia”!

Similarly, increased size of a portion of the body is described by tagging “megaly” to it. If someone therefore has an enlarged liver, it is termed “hepatomegaly”, if the spleen is enlarged, “splenomegaly”, if the heart grows big, it is called “cardiomegaly”, and for a swollen head doctors couch it as “craniomegaly”.

While these terms are of little value in most instances, there are situations where they help. Patients are often traumatized when the word “cancer” appears in medical discussions on their bedside. Discrete doctors therefore use terms such as “malignancy” (most people have become familiar with this word nowadays!) or “mitosis” to hide the meaning from patients, till the stage comes for divulging.

Another comical word that sounds medically bombastic and finds a place in several dignostic terms is “idiopathic”, which really means “it is not known”. Doctors once again demonstrate the unique trait of converting their ignorance into a style-statement by brandishing “idiopathic” for several conditions from a fall in platelet count to increased blood pressure, making a witty teacher remark “Idiopathic is idiotic for the doctor and pathetic for the patient.”

Let us not fool or be fooled by medical jargon!

As published in HT City (Hindustan Times) dated 22 January, 2012.