Quiz

CHAPTER TWO: MEDICAL TERMINOLOGY IN EMS

Medical terminology is the topic of this chapter of the course. While at first it seems boring, it actually involves information that is very important for every health professional to know about. There are terms related to body directions, planes, and body cavities that help you to know certain medical terms related to the human body. Most medical terms you will talk about in your job as an EMT are going to consist of prefixes, suffixes, and root words that together will help you understand what a given medical term relates to.

BODY DIRECTIONS AND PLANES

In medical terms, there will often be some mention of a body part or symptom related to a certain body direction or body plane. You should know these directional and planar terms and should use them in your job as an EMT-I. These are the directional terms you should understand:

• Cranial or superior—this refers to anything related to the head of the body.

Something that is superior to another thing in the body is directed more toward the head. • Caudal or inferior—this refers to anything toward the foot or away from the head.

Caudal refers to the feet generally and not to the rump. • Ventral or anterior—this refers to anything that is closer to or located in the front of the body. • Dorsal or posterior—this refers to anything that is closer to or located in the back of the body. • Medial—this is anything that is toward the middle of the body. The chest is considered medial to the shoulders and arms. • Lateral—this is anything away from the middle of the body. The lateral collateral ligament is on the outside of the knee compared to the medial collateral ligament.

• Proximal—this describes something that is closer to the trunk. As an example, the femur is proximal to the tibia. • Distal—this describes something that is away from the trunk. The hand, as an example, is distal to the elbow.

BODY PLANES

Figure 1 shows the different body planes:

Figure 1.

The body planes are those that divide the body into different components. These are the body planes you should know about:

• Coronal plane—this is referred to as the frontal plane. It is vertical and divides the front half (the ventral half) and the back half (the dorsal half) of the body. • Sagittal plane—this is referred to as the lateral plane. It is vertical and divides the body into left and right halves. • Axial plane—this is also called the transverse plane. It is horizontal and divides the body into the upper and lower parts. • Median plane—this is a specific sagittal plane that separates equally the left and right halves of the body.

BODY CAVITIES

Figure 2 describes the different body cavities:

Figure 2.