Accuracy and Transparency in Medical English Terminology. A Focus on Suffixes, with Particular Reference to the Use of -itis

Abstract

The prominent position of English in medical research makes term accuracy a very important feature in the successful transmission of meanings. Accuracy refers to the correctness of a term; it represents a very important feature of medical communication together with other principles, such as transparency. The latter is the possibility of immediately decoding the meaning of a term through an analysis of its surface form. Transparency does not always overlap with accuracy. In this respect, medical English terminology shows terms that, despite being transparent, are not used with the meaning an analysis of their form would suggest but are referred to different concepts. Starting from Tanchev’s discussion regarding the misuse of osteoarthritis in orthopedic surgery, this paper investigated whether other cases exist in medical English of inaccurately used terms ending in -itis. A list of diseases and conditions referring to inflammatory diseases was retrieved from Wikipedia, and the PubMed database was queried by means of keywords to provide illustrative text strings. The International Classification of Diseases served as a reference tool for the analysis. The investigation was also supported by authoritative medical dictionaries. The results showed that even though most of the investigated English terminology ending in -itis is accurately used, cases exist of either improper use of the suffix or imprecision due to the lack of the suffix itself. Corrective terminology interventions should be carried out to guarantee accuracy and semantic precision in taxonomies of diseases to prevent any ambiguities and misleading uses in medical literature and practice.