Removing Stitches Glossary of Terms

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Adjacent: Lying nearby. Related terms include superjacent, subjacent, and circumjacent. From ad-, near + the Latin jacere, to lie = to lie near.

Anesthetic: A substance that causes lack of feeling or awareness. A local anesthetic causes loss of feeling in a part of the body. A general anesthetic puts the person to sleep.

Antibiotic: A drug used to treat infections caused by bacteria and other microorganisms. Originally, an antibiotic was a substance produced by one microorganism that selectively inhibits the growth of another. Synthetic antibiotics, usually chemically related to natural antibiotics, have since been produced that accomplish comparable tasks.
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Antiseptic: Something that discourages the growth microorganisms. By contrast, aseptic refers to the absence of microorganisms.

Anxiety: A feeling of apprehension and fear characterized by physical symptoms such as palpitations, sweating, and feelings of stress. Anxiety disorders are serious medical illnesses that affect approximately 19 million American adults. These disorders fill people's lives with overwhelming anxiety and fear. Unlike the relatively mild, brief anxiety caused by a stressful event such as a business presentation or a first date, anxiety disorders are chronic, relentless, and can grow progressively worse if not treated.
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Arms: An appendage in anatomy and in clinical trials. See: Arm.

Artery: A vessel that carries blood high in oxygen content away from the heart to the farthest reaches of the body. Since blood in arteries is usually full of oxygen, the hemoglobin in the red blood cells is oxygenated. The resultant form of hemoglobin (oxyhemoglobin) is what makes arterial blood look bright red.
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Bypass: An operation in which a surgeon creates a new tubular pathway for the movement of fluids and/or other substances in the body.

Chest: The area of the body located between the neck and the abdomen. The chest contains the lungs, the heart and part of the aorta. The walls of the chest are supported by the dorsal vertebrae, the ribs, and the sternum.
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Cuts: Severed skin. Washing a cut or scrape with soap and water and keeping it clean and dry is all that is required to care for most wounds. Putting alcohol hydrogen peroxide, and iodine into a wound can delay healing and should be avoided. Seek medical care early if you think that you might need stitches. Any delay can increase the rate of wound infection. Any puncture wound through tennis shoes has a high risk of infection and should be seen by your healthcare professional. Any redness, swelling, increased pain, or pus draining from the wound may indicate an infection that requires professional care.

Discharge: 1.The flow of fluid from part of the body, such as from the nose or vagina.
2. The passing of an action potential, such as through a nerve or muscle fiber.
3. The release of a patient from a course of care. The doctor may then dictate a discharge summary.

Femoral: Having to do with the femur or, less often, the thigh. As in the femoral head (the head of the femur), the femoral artery, and femoral vein.

Femoral artery: A large artery that starts in the lower abdomen and goes down into the thigh The femoral artery starts as a continuation of the external iliac artery which comes from the abdominal aorta.
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Fever: Although a fever technically is any body temperature above the normal of 98.6 degrees F. (37 degrees C.), in practice a person is usually not considered to have a significant fever until the temperature is above 100.4 degrees F (38 degrees C.).
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Forceps: An instrument with two blades and a handle used for handling, grasping, or compressing. Many types of forceps are employed in medicine, including the alligator forceps (an angled instrument with jaws at the end), tissue forceps (a form of tweezer), hemostatic forceps (also simply called a hemostat, to clamp a bleeding vessel), mosquito forceps (a small hemostat) and obstetrical forceps (to aid in delivering a baby).
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Graft: Healthy skin, bone, or other tissue taken from one part of the body to replace diseased or injured tissue removed from another part of the body.
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Hypertrophic: Exhibiting hypertrophy (enlargement or overgrowth of an organ or part of the body due to increased size of the constituent cells), as in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

Infection: The growth of a parasitic organism within the body. (A parasitic organism is one that lives on or in another organism and draws its nourishment therefrom.) A person with an infection has another organism (a "germ") growing within him, drawing its nourishment from the person.
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Injury: Harm or hurt. The term "injury" may be applied in medicine to damage inflicted upon oneself as in a hamstring injury or by an external agent on as in a cold injury. The injury may be accidental or deliberate, as with a needlestick injury. The term "injury" may be synonymous (depending on the context) with a wound or with trauma.

Keloid: A scar that doesn't know when to stop. When the skin is injured, cells grow back to fill in the gap. Somehow, they normally "know" when the scar tissue is level with the skin, at which point the cells stop multiplying. When the cells keep on reproducing, the result is a what is called a overgrown (hypertrophic) scar or a keloid. The result is a keloid -- a tough heaped-up scar that rises quite abruptly above the rest of the skin. It is irregularly shaped and tends to enlarge progressively.
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Leg: In popular usage, the leg extends from the top of the thigh down to the foot. However, in medical terminology, the leg refers to the portion of the lower extremity from the knee to the ankle.
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Neck: The part of the body joining the head to the shoulders. Also, any narrow or constricted part of a bone or organ that joins its parts as, for example, the neck of the femur bone.

Ointment: A medication preparation that is applied topically (onto the skin). An ointment has an oil base whereas a cream is water-soluble. (The word ointment comes from the Latin ungere meaning anoint with oil).

Operation: Although there are many meanings to the word "operation", in medicine it refers to a surgical procedure.
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Pain: An unpleasant sensation that can range from mild, localized discomfort to agony. Pain has both physical and emotional components. The physical part of pain results from nerve stimulation. Pain may be contained to a discrete area, as in an injury, or it can be more diffuse, as in disorders like fibromyalgia. Pain is mediated by specific nerve fibers that carry the pain impulses to the brain where their conscious appreciation may be modified by many factors.
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Sunscreen: A substance that blocks the effect of the sun's harmful rays. Using lotions that contain sunscreens can reduce the risk of skin cancer, including melanoma.

Surgery: The word "surgery" has multiple meanings. It is the branch of medicine concerned with diseases and conditions which require or are amenable to operative procedures. Surgery is the work done by a surgeon. By analogy, the work of an editor wielding his pen as a scalpel is s form of surgery. A surgery in England (and some other countries) is a physician's or dentist's office.
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Suture: 1. A type of joint between the bones of the skull where the bones are held tightly together by fibrous tissue. 2. Thread-like material used to sew tissue together. 3. To stitch a wound closed.

The word suture came with little change from the Latin sutura, "a sewn seam." In Latin, the verb suere is "to sew, stitch, or tack together."

Topical: Pertaining to a particular surface area. A topical agent is applied to a certain area of the skin and is intended to affect only the area to which it is applied. Whether its effects are indeed limited to that area depends upon whether the agent stays where it is put or is absorbed into the blood stream.

Vitamin E: Alpha-tocopherol, an antioxidant vitamin which binds oxygen free radicals that can cause tissue damage. Deficiency of vitamin E can lead to anemia. Vitamin E may play a possible role in preventing heart disease and cancer of the lung and prostate.
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