Medical Dictionary Definitions A-Z List
Medical Dictionary Definitions A - Z - «L»:
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Leech therapy
Leech therapy: The use of leeches in medical treatment. Once used as an almost universal cure, leeches were largely abandoned by medicine but in the second half of the 20th century refound a role. That role is largely in plastic and reconstructive surgery. Leeches can assist, for example, in the rea...
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Left atrium
Left atrium: The upper right chamber of the heart. The left atrium receives oxygenated blood from the lungs and pumps it down into the left ventricle which delivers it to the body....
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Left heart
Left heart: The heart is
composed functionally of two hearts - the right heart and the
left heart. The left heart consists of the left atrium
which receives oxygenated blood from the lung and the left
ventricle which pumps it out to the body under high
pressure. ...
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Left heart hypoplasia syndrome
Left heart hypoplasia syndrome:
A form of congenital heart disease in which the whole left
half of the heart (including the aorta, aortic valve, left
ventricle and mitral valve) is underdeveloped
(hypoplastic). Blood returning from the lungs has to flow
through an opening in the wall between ...
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Left hepatic duct
Left hepatic duct: The duct that drains bile from the left half of the liver and joins the right hepatic duct to form the common hepatic duct....
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Left ventricle
Left ventricle: The left lower chamber of the heart that receives blood from the left atrium and pumps it out under high pressure through the aorta to the body....
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Left ventricular assist device
Left ventricular assist device: See: Ventricular assist device....
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Left-handed
Left-handed: The preferential use of the left hand for most fine manual tasks. Approximately 10% of the population is left-handed. In French, the word for left is gauche meaning clumsy or awkward and the word for right is droit. In Latin the word for left is sinister and that for right is dexter (a...
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Leg
Leg: In popular usage, the leg extends from the top of the thigh down to the foot. However, in medical terminology, the leg refers to the portion of the lower extremity from the knee to the ankle.
The leg has two bones: the tibia and the fibula. Both are known as long bones. The larger of the two is...
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Leg pain with cramping
Leg pain with cramping: An aching, crampy, tired, and sometimes burning pain in the legs that comes and goes -- it typically occurs with walking and goes away with rest -- due to poor circulation of blood in the arteries of the legs. Known medically as intermittent claudication.
Intermittent claud...
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Leg, ankle and foot bones
Leg, ankle and foot bones: There are 62 lower extremity bones. They consist of 10 hip and leg, 14 ankle and 38 foot bones.
The 10 hip and leg bones are the innominate or hip bone (fusion of the ilium, ischium, and pubis), femur, tibia, fibula, and patella (kneecap) on each side.
The 14 ankle bones ...
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Leg, lower
Leg, lower: The lower leg is the bottom segment of
the leg: the part below the knee.
The lower leg contains two long bones. The larger of these two
bones is the tibia, the smaller one the fibula.
The tibia is familiarly known as the shinbone.
"Tibia" is a Latin word meaning both shinbone and fl...
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Leg, upper
Leg, upper: The upper leg is the superior (top) segment of the leg: the part above the knee.
As compared to the lower leg which boasts two bones (the tibia and the fibula), the upper leg has only one bone: the femur but a very large bone it is, the largest in the human body, extending by necessity ...
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Legal blindness
Legal blindness: The criteria used to determine eligibility for government disability benefits and which do not necessarily indicate a person's ability to function.
In the US, the criteria for legal blindness are:
Visual acuity of 20/200 or worse in the better eye with corrective lenses (20/200 me...
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Legal medicine
Legal medicine: The branch of medicine that deals with the application of medical knowledge to legal problems and legal proceedings. Legal medicine is also called forensic medicine.
A physician may be engaged in legal (or forensic) medicine while a lawyer with identical interests is said to be in...
