List of medical abbreviations

List of medical abbreviations
Abbreviations are used very frequently in medicine. They boost efficiency as long as they are used intelligently. The advantages of brevity should be weighed against the possibilities of obfuscation (making the communication harder for others to understand) and ambiguity (having more than one possible interpretation). Certain medical abbreviations are avoided to prevent mistakes, according to best practices (and in some cases regulatory requirements); these are flagged in the list of abbreviations used in medical prescriptions.
Orthographic styling
Periods (stops)
Periods (stops) are often used in styling abbreviations. Prevalent practice in medicine today is often to forgo them as unnecessary.
Example:
Less common: The diagnosis was C.O.P.D. [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease]
More common: The diagnosis was COPD
Plurals
The prevalent way to represent plurals for medical acronyms and initialisms is simply to affix a lowercase s (no apostrophe).
Example: one OCP, two OCPs [oral contraceptive pills].
Possessives
Possessive forms are not often needed, but can be formed using apostrophe + s. Often the writer can also recast the sentence to avoid it.
Example:
BP's effect on risk of MI is multifaceted.
The effect of BP on MI risk is multifaceted.
Arrows
Arrows may be used to indicate numerous conditions including elevation (↑), diminution (↓), and causation (→, ←).
Pronunciation
Pronunciation follows convention outside the medical field, in which acronyms are generally pronounced as if they were a word (JAMA, SIDS), initialisms are generally pronounced as individual letters (DNA, SSRI), and abbreviations generally use the expansion (soln. = "solution", sup. = "superior"). Abbreviations of weights and measures are pronounced using the expansion of the unit (mg = "milligram") and chemical symbols using the chemical expansion (NaCl = "sodium chloride").
Some initialisms deriving from Latin may be pronounced either as letters (qid = "cue eye dee") or using the English expansion (qid = "four times a day").
Some common medical abbreviations
Notation conventions
This series of lists omits periods from acronyms and initialisms.
It uses periods for certain abbreviations that traditionally often have them (mostly older Latin/Neo-Latin abbreviations). For example, both bid and b.i.d. may be found in the list.
It generally uses the singular form of an abbreviation (not the plural) as the headword.
This list uses significant capitalization for headwords (the abbreviations) and their expansions.
See also
List of abbreviations used in medical prescriptions
List of medical roots, suffixes and prefixes
Medical dictionary
Medical slang
Abbreviation#Style conventions in English
Acronym and initialism#Orthographic styling
References
.
Available online (by subscription) at MedAbbrev.com.
External links
Biggest Collection of Medical Abbreviations
Glossary of Medical Terms - Tufts University
Medical Abbreviations EN English Medical Abbreviations for Android
JD.MD, Inc. online Medical & Dental Abbreviations Glossary
Acronyms for Medical & Dental professional organizations
Medical Abbreviations for iPhone
Medical abbreviations on mediLexicon
Medical acronyms and abbreviations on allacronyms.com
Over 20,000 medical abbreviations sorted into specialist categories
Medical abbreviations in various categories such as Physiology, Oncology, Laboratory and more