Free Medical Dictionary Launched by MedicineNet.com

MedicineNet.com has launched medterms.com, a free e-encyclopedic dictionary designed for use by anyone concerned with health issues. This site contains over 9,000 entries covering standard medical terms as well as pertinent scientific terms, abbreviations, syndromes, eponyms, and medical history related to medicine and the biomedical sciences.

At the top of http://www.medterms.com you'll see a hyperlinked alphabet that you can use to browse the dictionary. Off to the left there's a search box. I looked up Hydrocephalus.

The definition (for "communicating Hydrocephalus") was: "Hydrocephalus in which the excess CSF gathers in the subarachnoid space rather than the ventricles of the brain."

There are three words there I'm not clear on: CSF, subarachnoid, and ventricles (as they relate to a brain). I looked up CSF. It was there in several different definitions. ( Cerebrospinal fluid , CSF, etc.) I looked up subarachnoid. While I couldn't find a definition for subarachnoid itself, the definition for Subarachnoid hemorrhage gave me enough contextual clues that I could get a rough idea. Ventricle, Brain had its own definition and now I know plenty about the four ventricles of the brain.

Medterms.com has trouble with misspelled words. Hydrocefalus returned no results. Ventrical also returned no results. Since sometimes you will hear a term and have no idea how it's spelled, it would be good if medterms.com could at least provide some guesses for the appropriate spelling. Still, worth a look.

Posted to Reference-Dictionaries