Glossary
Surgery: A procedure to remove or repair a part of the body or to find out whether disease is present.Blood Pressure: The pressure of the blood on the walls of the arteries, dependent on the energy of the heart action, the elasticity of the walls of the arteries, and the volume and viscosity (resistance) of the blood.
Diabetes: A condition in which the body cannot properly store or use glucose (sugar), the body's main source of energy.
Dialysis: The process of cleansing the blood when the kidneys are not able to filter the blood.
Heart attack: Descriptive term for a myocardial infarction: a painful, and sometimes fatal, incident caused by the blockage of one or more of the coronary arteries resulting in interruption of blood flow to a part of the heart.
Stroke: Sudden, severe attack that results in brain damage. Usually sudden paralysis or speech difficulty results from injury to the brain or spinal cord by a blood clot, hemorrhage or occlusion of blood supply to the brain from a narrowed or blocked artery.
Hernia: Also called rupture, "hernia" is a general term referring to a protrusion of a tissue through the wall of the cavity in which it is normally contained.
