Medical and Dental English Listening: Common Conditions, Treatments, and Oral Care Explained

Medical and Dental English. Today's lesson is an overview of vocabulary used in medicine and dentistry. Even if you don't work in these areas, you'll learn many useful words for talking about health problems and treatments in English. Let's start with the people who work in the medical profession. We have doctors who identify medical problems and recommend treatment and nurses who help care for the patients. A doctor who specializes in a particular area is called a specialist. Here are a few common types of specialists. Surgeons perform surgery operations. Pediatricians specialize in working with babies and children. Cardiologists specialize in heart conditions and dermatologists specialize in skin conditions. Psychiatrists specialize in mental health and orthopedists specialize in the skeletal and muscular systems. Oncologists specialize in treating cancer and gynecologists specialize in the health of the female reproductive system. For a more complete list of specialists, you can click on the link in the lesson text.





Everyone should go to the doctor regularly for a routine checkup or physical. This is a general examination usually done once per year to monitor your health and make sure you don't have any problems. Checkups or physicals are a form of preventative care, things you do to prevent health problems before they start. At the checkup, the doctor usually does a few things. Measures your height, how tall you are in feet and inches or meters, and measures your weight, how heavy you are in pounds or kilograms. The doctor might listen to your heart and lungs with the piece of equipment called a stethoscope. He will probably put the stethoscope on your chest and tell you to take a deep breath. That means inhale a lot of air. The doctor might also check your blood pressure. If your blood pressure is too high, that is called hypertension and it can lead to heart attacks and strokes among other serious medical conditions. The doctor may also take a blood sample or a urine sample, which are sent to the laboratory or lab for testing to check for potential problems.





Here are some expressions for common health problems and treatments. One way to help prevent illness is to get immunizations or vaccinations, medicines that protect you from specific diseases. Unfortunately, not every disease has a vaccination available, so everybody gets sick from time to time. The doctor will ask you to describe your symptoms. Symptoms are the physical signals of the health problem that you are experiencing. Here are a few ways you can respond. I have a fever. That's elevated body temperature. I have a cough. I have a sore throat. I have a runny nose, meaning your nose is dripping liquid. I have a stuffy nose, meaning your nose is blocked and you have difficulty breathing. I have a headache or I have a stomach ache. I have diarrhea. I have a rash. That's an unusual colored area on your skin. I'm constipated, meaning your digestion is blocked and you have difficulty going to the bathroom. I'm having trouble sleeping or I'm having trouble breathing. I'm feeling unusually tired. I'm feeling light-headed, which means you feel like you might lose consciousness.





Telling the doctor about your symptoms will help him make a diagnosis, identifying your health problem specifically. If you want, you can also get a second opinion, meaning consult a different doctor. To treat you, the doctor might give you a shot, an injection, or give you a prescription, official permission to buy certain medicines. For antibiotics, which are used to treat bacterial infections, or painkillers, which are used to reduce pain. Hopefully, your medicine won't have any side effects, those unpleasant additional effects like making you feel tired or making you lose your appetite. If there's a chance you might have cancer, the doctor will perform a biopsy. That means removing a small sample of the potentially cancerous cells or tissue for analysis in the lab. If the test shows that it is benign, that means it is not cancer and will not spread to other parts of your body. If the test shows that it is malignant, that means it is cancer and can spread to other parts of your body. Treatments for cancer include surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation therapy.





Now let's talk about injuries when you hurt yourself in an accident. Common types of injuries include cuts, when something sharp breaks open your skin and you start to bleed. If the cut is serious, you may need to get stitches, which hold the cut together until it heals. Burns are injuries from fire or hot objects. The treatment involves applying a special ointment and a bandage to cover the damaged skin and protect it from infection. Sprains and strains are injuries to your tendons and ligaments, the connections between your muscles and bones. Sprains and strains usually heal in several weeks with rest. The doctor may also give you a brace to help support that part of your body until it gets better. Broken bones or fractures are when you break your arm, leg, or another part of your skeleton. Depending on the fracture, the doctor may need to set the fracture, put the broken parts of the bone into alignment. Then you'll get a cast, a hard protective covering of plaster that keeps the broken bones immobile until they heal.





We'll finish up our study with a trip to the dentist. It's important to visit frequently for a cleaning of your teeth, which is usually done by the dentist's assistant called a dental hygienist. The cleaning removes plaque, a light yellow covering of bacteria that forms naturally on teeth. If left untreated plaque can lead to inflammation of the gums, as well as cavities, holes in the teeth. If you have a cavity, the dentist will first do some x-rays to see the extent of the damage. Then she will give you local anesthesia, an injection that makes that area of your mouth numb. She then removes the damaged area of the tooth and inserts a filling, which can be made of gold, silver, ceramics, or a synthetic material. If the tooth is badly decayed, then it might be necessary to perform a root canal. That's when the nerves and blood vessels inside a tooth are completely removed, filled with an artificial material, and then the top of the tooth is protected with a crown. Finally, if a tooth is very seriously damaged, it can be extracted, removed. Dentists can also repair chipped teeth and perform cosmetic procedures such as whitening. If your teeth are crooked, your dentist can refer you to an orthodontist, who can give you braces. Finally, the names for teeth: incisors, canines, molars, wisdom teeth, and baby teeth.

This concludes the medical and dental English listening content collected by Xiao Wu from Qicai.net. We hope you gained some useful knowledge from it!