1. Terminology in Healthcare and Public Health Settings
Understanding Medical Words
Lecture a Word Roots
Welcome to Terminology in Healthcare and Public Health Settings, Understanding Medical Words. This is Lecture A, Word Roots. In this first lecture of Understanding Medical Words, we will cover some general concepts regarding medical terminology, but we will primarily focus on word roots and combining vowels.
This material (Comp 3 Unit 1) was developed by the University of Alabama at Birmingham, funded by the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology under Award Number 90WT0007.
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2. Understanding Medical Words Learning Objectives
Discuss the four parts of medical terms
Recognize word roots and combining forms
Identify the most common prefixes and suffixes
Describe the anatomical positions
Define the body planes
Identify regions of the body
Define directional and positional terms
Build, divide, spell and pronounce common medical words
The Objectives for this unit, Understanding Medical Words, are to:
Discuss the four parts of medical terms
Recognize word roots and combining forms
Identify the most common prefixes and suffixes
Describe the anatomical positions
Define the body planes
Identify regions of the body
Define directional and positional terms
Build, divide, spell and pronounce common medical words

3. Medical Terminology
Studying medical terminology is like learning a new language
Basic rules for building terms will help you both build and translate many different words
You must be able to put words together or build words from their parts
Like putting together the pieces of a puzzle
Studying medical terminology is like learning a new language. There are basic rules for building terms that will help you both build and translate many different words that you will encounter throughout your healthcare career in Health IT. In order to be successful, you must be able to put words together or build words from their parts. It’s much like putting together the pieces of a puzzle.

4. Understanding Medical Terms
It is impossible to memorize all of the thousands of medical terms
You can figure out the meaning of many different words simply by analyzing the word parts
Word roots
Prefixes
Suffixes
Combining forms
It is impossible to memorize all of the thousands of medical terms. If you are able to figure out the words and their meanings by analyzing their word parts, however, you will be able to understand much of medical terminology. There are four basic word parts that we will discuss. These include:
Word roots
Prefixes
Suffixes
Combining forms

5. Basic Word Parts Word root is the general meaning of the term
Prefixes are added to the beginning of the word
Suffixes are added to the ending of the word
Combining vowels connect other word parts
The word root provides the general meaning of the term and is the key part of the term. Prefixes are added to the beginning of the word, while suffixes are added to the ending of the word. Combining vowels allow us to connect different word parts together.  

6. Basic Word Part Examples
Example (Meaning)
Word Root
cardiology (study of the heart)
Prefix
tachycardia (condition of a fast heart)
Suffix
carditis (inflammation of the heart)
Combining Form
cardiomyopathy (disease of the heart muscle)
Here’s an example of how each is used.
The first word is cardiology. The word root is cardi (pronounced CARD-ee) which means heart. So our term cardiology means study of the heart.  
The second word example is tachycardia (pronounced tacky-CARD-ee-uh). The prefix is tachy (pronounced tacky), which means fast. So this term literally means fast heart.
The third word example is carditis (pronounced car-dite-iss). The suffix itis (pronounced ite-iss) means inflammation. Carditis is inflammation of the heart.
The fourth word is cardiomyopathy (pronounced CARDIO-my-OPP-uh-thy (like theology). We are combining cardi or heart, and my or muscle, with pathy or disease. We need to use combining vowels in order to connect each of these. We will be using the vowel “o”. The term cardiomyopathy is disease of the heart muscle.

7. Word Root Core part of the term Provides general meaning of the word
Usually gives a body part
oste = bone
cardi = heart
rhino = nose
Word roots are the Core part of the term. They also provide the general meaning of the word. Word roots usually refers to a body part. Examples include
Oste (pronounced oss-tee)-- bone
Cardi -- heart
Rhino (pronounced rhino like rhinocerous) -- nose

8. Combining Vowels Make it possible to pronounce long terms
Usually an “o”
Combine two word parts:
Between two word roots
Between word root and suffix
Combining Vowels make it possible to pronounce long terms. Combining vowels combine two word parts such as between two word roots or between a word root and a suffix. The vowel that is usually used is an “o”.

9. Combining Vowel Rules Between word root and suffix
If the suffix begins with a vowel
Do not use a combining vowel
Arthritis (not arthroitis)
If the suffix begins with a consonant
Use a combining vowel
Arthroscope (not arthrscope)
Just like any language there are rules regarding the use of vowels. The rule we see in this slide deals with the use of the combining vowel between a word root and a suffix.
If the suffix begins with a vowel, we do not use a combining vowel. For example, in the word arthritis, ‘arthr’ means joint and ‘itis’ (pronounced ite-iss) means inflammation. Typically, to combine the two we would use the combining vowel “o”...but because the suffix “itis” begins with a vowel, we would not use the “o”. We would just connect the two words together to form the word ‘arthritis.’
If the suffix begins with a consonant, we would use the combining vowel and we would typically use the combining vowel “o”. For example, in the word arthroscope, arthr means joint, scope means examine. Since the suffix begins with a consonant, we would add the combining vowel to connect the two parts together to come up with ‘arthroscope.’(pronounced ARTH-ro-scope)

10. Combining Vowel Rules (con’t)
Combining vowel is typically kept between two word roots
Even if the second word root begins with a vowel
Gastroenteritis (not gastrenteritis)
This next rule deals with using a combining vowel between two word roots. We typically will use the combining vowel between two root words even if the second word root begins with a vowel. The example used is gastroenteritis (pronounced gas-tro-enter-ite-iss). The first root word, G-A-S-T-R means stomach, the second root word is enter, which means pertaining to the intestine. The last part of the word is itis, which mean inflammation..

11. Combining Form Typically used to write word roots
Also uses the word root / combining vowel format
Examples:
cardi/o
hepat/o
gastr/o
When we typically write word roots, we will include the combining vowel. The format that is used is the word root followed by a slash and then the combining vowel. Three examples are provided to illustrate this....cardio (pronounced CARD-ee-oh).....hepato (pronounced heh-PAT-oh ).....gastro (pronounced gastro)

12. Examples of Combining Forms
arthro - joint cardio - heart dermato - skin entero - small intestine gastro - stomach hemato - blood nephro - kidney neuro - nerve
oto - ear pulmono - lung rhino - nose uro - urine, urinary system
Examples of word roots and their combining vowel are illustrated here:
arthro - joint
cardio - heart
 dermato (pronounced Der-MAT-oh) - skin
 entero (pronounced EN-tero) - small intestine
 gastro - stomach
 hemato (pronounced hee-mat-oh) - blood
 nephro - kidney
 neuro - nerve
 oto (pronounced oh-toe) - ear
 pulmono (pronounced PULL-muh-no)- lung
 rhino - nose
 uro (pronounced You-ro) - urine, urinary system

13. Understanding Medical Words Summary – Word Roots
Four parts of medical terms
Word roots and combining forms
Common prefixes and suffixes
This concludes Lecture a of Understanding Medical Words.
In summary, we covered some general concepts regarding medical terminology, focusing primarily on word roots and combining vowels.

14. Understanding Medical Words References – Lecture a
Understanding medical words: a tutorial from the National Library of Medicine. [Internet] Nov 28.
“No Audio”

15. Terminology in Healthcare and Public Health Settings Understanding Medical Words Lecture a
This material was developed by the University of Alabama at Birmingham, funded by the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology under Award Number 90WT0007.
No Audio.
Health IT Workforce Curriculum Version 4.0