Word Of The Day
Dorland's Word of the Day is a great way to broaden your knowledge of medical terminology. With a new and interesting term brought to you from the 32nd edition of Dorland's Illustrated Medical Dictionary each day, it's an easy and fun way to increase your medical vocabulary!
You can view a new word on this website each day.
Today's Word
pamidronate (APD)
an aminohydroxypropylidene-substituted diphosphonate compound with an affinity for sites of osteoid mineralization; it inhibits bone resorption by adsorbing onto hydroxyapatite crystals in mineralized bone matrix and reducing its solubility, and possibly also by inhibiting osteoclast activity. Complexed with technetium 99m, it is used in bone imaging. The disodium salt, pamidronate disodium, is used in the treatment of malignancy-associated hypercalcemia, osteitis deformans, and osteolytic bone metastases associated with breast cancer and myeloma; administered intravenously.
Word of the Day Archive
palivizumab
a humanized monoclonal antibody produced by recombinant DNA technology and directed against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV); used as a passive immunizing agent in susceptible infants and children, administered intramuscularly.
circumventricular organs
several small structures located around the edges of the third and fourth ventricles, lacking the regular blood-brain barrier and thus serving as significant sites for neural-endocrine interaction. They include the area postrema, median eminence, subcommissural organ, subfornical organ, and organum vasculosum of lamina terminalis. Sometimes also included are the funiculus separans, neurohypophysis, and pineal body.
oprelvekin
a recombinant derivative of interleukin-11, used as a hematopoietic stimulator to prevent thrombocytopenia following myelosuppressive chemotherapy in patients with nonmyeloid malignancies; administered subcutaneously.
pull-through operation
surgery on the intestine in which a diseased segment is removed and a proximal segment is pulled down and through the part just beyond the removed part.
oligoclonal
pertaining to or derived from only a few clones.
chronic airflow obstruction
name given to a group of disorders in which the upper or lower airways are chronically obstructed; it includes chronic bronchitis, emphysema, and other types of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Called also chronic airway obstruction.
raphe nuclei
the median column reticular nuclei, a subgroup of the reticular nuclei of the brain stem, found in narrow longitudinal sheets along the raphae of the medulla oblongata, pons, and mesencephalon; they include many neurons that synthesize serotonin. Their ascending fibers project to parts of the limbic system and their descending fibers project to other brain stem nuclei, the medulla oblongata, and the pons.