Terminology of Body Systems
Building system vocabulary
Each system has a core set of roots, and questions test whether you can choose the right synonym. Cardiovascular: cardi/o, angi/o and vas/o (vessel), phleb/o (vein), arteri/o, ather/o (plaque). Respiratory: pulmon/o, pneum/o (air/lung), bronch/o, laryng/o, phren/o (diaphragm). Digestive: gastr/o, enter/o (intestine), col/o and colon/o, hepat/o, cholecyst/o (gallbladder), chol/e (bile). Urinary: nephr/o and ren/o (kidney), cyst/o (bladder), ureter/o, urethr/o. Nervous: neur/o, encephal/o, myel/o, cerebr/o. Musculoskeletal: my/o, oste/o, arthr/o, chondr/o, ten/o. Reproductive: hyster/o, oophor/o, orchid/o, prostat/o. Blood and lymph: hemat/o, lymph/o. Special senses: ophthalm/o, ot/o, rhin/o.
Symptom and finding suffixes
-emia (blood condition), -uria (urine condition), -megaly (enlargement), -malacia (softening), -sclerosis (hardening), -stenosis (narrowing), -ptosis (drooping), -plegia (paralysis), -paresis (weakness), -rrhage (bursting forth).
Traps
Several roots are ambiguous and only context resolves them: myel/o means spinal cord in myelitis but bone marrow in myeloid; cyst/o is usually the bladder but can denote any sac; chol/e is bile while cholecyst/o is the gallbladder. Never mix nephr/o and ren/o in one term, even though both mean kidney.
Worked example
A term meaning "softening of the spinal cord": myel/o + -malacia = myelomalacia. Compare osteomalacia, bone softening, which uses the identical suffix - the root, not the ending, identifies the tissue.