Have you ever visited a health care professional and heard long, unfamiliar medical terms used to describe your condition? Many people feel as if medical professionals use a different language when talking about medical issues that can be difficult to understand. A medical term describes a word or condition that under normal circumstances would take several words to describe. Medical terminology facilitates effective and efficient communication by health care professionals by conveying a great quantity of information with precision in the fewest number of words.

This chapter will describe the components of medical terms, including common prefixes, word roots, and suffixes. By understanding the meaning of common components included in a medical term, you can easily construct the meaning of the term based on the meanings of its components. Specific medical terms related to body systems will be further discussed in the remaining chapters of this book.