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Medicine vocabulary · Diagnosis and Tests

Diagnosis

Meaning in medicine, with examples

/ˌdaɪəɡˈnoʊsɪs/nounCore term

In medicine, diagnosis means: The decision about which disease or condition is causing a patient's problems, reached after taking a history, examining the patient and doing tests.

In Turkish: tanı, teşhis

How it is used

Doctors make, reach or confirm a diagnosis; a patient receives a diagnosis or is diagnosed with a disease. In notes it is often shortened to Dx. The plural is diagnoses.

Example sentences

  1. The diagnosis was confirmed by a biopsy.

  2. He was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes three years ago.

  3. We don't have a clear diagnosis yet, so we're waiting for the scan results.

Common collocations

  • make a diagnosis
  • confirm the diagnosis
  • working diagnosis
  • be diagnosed with
  • early diagnosis
  • differential diagnosisA list of the possible diseases that could explain a patient's symptoms and signs, which the doctor narrows down with tests and more questions.
  • prognosisA doctor's opinion about how an illness is likely to develop and what the chances of recovery or survival are.
  • investigationA test or examination, such as a blood test or a scan, done to find the cause of a patient's problem or to check their condition.
  • rule outTo show with a history, an examination or a test that a patient does not have a particular disease, so it can be removed from the list of possibilities.
  • symptomSomething a patient feels and reports, such as pain, tiredness or nausea, that may show they have an illness. Doctors learn about it by asking, not by measuring.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Diagnosis and Tests

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This page explains English vocabulary for learners. It is not medical advice.