Medical Prefixes and Suffixes

Janine BSci BHSci(Nursing) PGCertPHC NZRN AUSRN

Ever wondered what certain words used by your doctor or nurse mean? 🩺 Do you start to feel perplexed and just wish they could simplify things?

As part of our mission to demystify and simplify health information, we're starting with the basics. We believe that understanding common medical prefixes and suffixes is a great way to help you break down and understand complex medical terms.

Here are a couple of examples to get you started:

A couple of examples to show you how the following prefixes are put into practice: bradycardia means slow heart rate, hypotensive refers to low blood pressure, hypertensive means high blood pressure, and bicuspid valve is a heart valve with two flaps.

More examples: nulliparous refers to a woman who has never given birth, tachycardia means fast heart rate usually above 100bpm and periorbital means around your eyes

Examples of how the following suffixes are used in medicine and nursing and what they mean: osteomalacia is a condition known as the 'soft bone disease', osteoclasts are cells that break down old bone cells and hyperemesis refers to extreme nausea and vomiting during pregnancy

More examples of how the following suffixes are used in medical terminology: dysmenorrhea refers to painful periods and dyspnea refers to shortness of breath.

However, keep in mind that it is important to also look at the prefix being used in front of the suffix. For example the medical term dysuria refers to a urine condition but the prefix dys- which means bad, would mean pain or discomfort when passing urine.

Hope this all makes sense! If you have any questions, please feel free to send us an email to get in touch!

References
Copstead & Banasik (2010). Pathophysiology. (5th edition). Elsevier Saunders