Category: P

An agglutinoid having a greater affinity for the agglutinogen than that possessed by the agglutinin.  

The fifth factor (factor V) in blood coagulation.  

The health care administrator responsible for safeguarding patient confidentiality at a clinic or hospital. Under regulations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the privacy officer oversees institutional privacy policies, procedures, and rules.  

In the medical context, the rights of a patient to control the distribution and release of data concerning his or her illness. This includes information the patient has provided to the health care professionals and all additional information contained in the chart, medical records, and laboratory data. Failure to observe this aspect of a patient’s…

A device for estimating abnormal refraction of the eye by using prisms.  

A transparent solid, three sides of which are parallelograms. The bases, perpendicular to the three sides, are triangles, and a transverse section of the solid is a triangle. Light rays going through a prism are deflected toward the base of the triangle and at the same time are split into the primary colors.  

Any transmissible neurodegenerative disease believed to be caused by a proteinaceous infectious particle (also known as prion proteins, or PrPs). PrPs change other cellular proteins, producing intracellular vacuoles (“spongiform change”) that disrupt the functioning of neurons. Included in this group are Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease, Gerstmann-Strussler-Scheinker syndrome, kuru, and fatal familial insomnia in humans, mad cow disease…

“First do no harm,” the goal in health care, of avoiding actions that may worsen a patient’s disease or suffering.  

The deciduous teeth, colloquially known as “baby teeth.” The initial collection of teeth in a child’s mouth, commonly referred to as primary teeth or baby teeth. The initial set of teeth to emerge, also referred to as baby teeth, typically begin appearing around the age of six months. These primary teeth are subsequently replaced by…

The initial sore or hard chancre of syphilis. The first sore or lesion of syphilis, also known as a chancre or hardsore.