Medical Dictionary Definitions A-Z List
Medical Dictionary Definitions A - Z - «S»:
-
Spastic colitis
Spastic colitis: A common gastrointestinal disorder involving an abnormal condition of gut contractions (motility)
characterized by abdominal pain, bloating, mucous in stools, and irregular bowel
habits with alternating
diarrhea and constipation, symptoms that tend to be chronic and to wax
and wa...
-
Spastic colon
Spastic colon: A term
sometimes used to refer to irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). Although the term "spastic" colon implies the
occurrence of muscle contractions, or spasms, in the large bowel, this may
not hold true for all cases of IBS. See also irritable bowel
syndrome....
-
Spastic dysphonia
Spastic dysphonia: See: Spasmodic dysphonia....
-
Spastic paraplegia, autosomal dominant
Spastic paraplegia, autosomal dominant: A degenerative disorder of nerves with progressive spasticity of the legs. Abbreviated as AD-HSP.
Spasticity is a state of increased muscle tone. Paraplegia refers to the legs (quadriplegia refers to both the arms and legs). In hereditary spastic paraplegia th...
-
Spastic pseudoparalysis
Spastic pseudoparalysis: Better known as
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). A dementing disease of the brain.
CJD is believed to be due to
a highly unconventional transmissible agent named a prion. It is not
a bacteria, not a virus, in fact not like any other known type of
infectious agent.
Symptom...
-
Spasticity
Spasticity: A state of increased tone of a muscle (and an increase in the deep tendon reflexes). For example, with spasticity of the legs (spastic paraplegia) there is an increase in tone of the leg muscles so they feel tight and rigid and the knee jerk reflex is exaggerated....
-
SPD calcinosis
SPD calcinosis: Striopallidodentate (SPD) calcinosis, a condition first described in 1930 by T. Fahr and therefore called Fahr syndrome, is a genetic (inherited) neurological disorder characterized by abnormal deposits of calcium in certain of areas of the brain (including the basal ganglia and the ...
-
Special pathogen
Special pathogen: A highly infectious agent that produces severe disease in humans. Special pathogens include the viruses that cause several hemorrhagic fevers, such as Ebola hemorrhagic fever, Lassa fever, and hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, and other recently identified and emerging viral diseases,...
-
Specific developmental disorder
Specific developmental disorder: A
disorder that selectively affects one area of development, sparing essentially all other areas of development.
For example, dysgraphia is one type of specific developmental disorder. In dysgraphia there is inability to write legibly. Problems in dysgraphia may ...
-
Specific-pathogen free
Specific-pathogen free: A term
applied to animals reared for use in laboratory experiments
when the animals are known to be free of germs that can
cause disease (pathogenic microorganisms)....
-
Specificity
Specificity: 1. The quality of being specific as, for example, she showed the use of specificity in her diagnosis.
2. The proportion of persons without a disease who are correctly identified by a test. The specificity is the number of true negative results divided by the sum of the numbers of true...
-
Specificity, analytic
Specificity, analytic: See: Analytic specificity....
-
Speckled iris
Speckled iris: Due to little
white (or lightly colored) spots that are slightly elevated
on the surface of the iris. These spots, arranged in a ring
concentric with the pupil, occur in normal children but are
far more frequent in Down's syndrome (trisomy 21). They
were described in 1924 by T...
-
SPECT
SPECT: An acronym that stands for Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography, a nuclear medicine procedure in which a gamma camera rotates around the patient and takes pictures from many angles, which a computer then uses to form a tomographic (cross-sectional) image.
The calculation process in SPE...
-
SPECT scan
SPECT scan: Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography, a nuclear medicine procedure in which a gamma camera rotates around the patient and takes pictures from many angles, which a computer then uses to form a tomographic (cross-sectional) image.
The calculation process in SPECT is similar to that ...