Centimeter (cm)
Centimeter (cm): A unit of measure in the metric system which is 1/100’th of a meter. There are 2.54 centimeters (cms) in one inch. The centimeter is commonly used in medicine to state the size of objects or distance between points.
It may seem senseless to define a centimeter in a medical dictionary but in North American medicine (and medicine everywhere) today, length measurements are usually expressed in such metric units and not in inches or feet.
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Centimorgan (cM): A unit of measure of genetic recombination frequency. One cM is equal to a 1% chance that a marker at one genetic locus will be separated from a marker at another locus due to crossing over in a single generation. In humans, 1 cM is equivalent, on average, to 1 million base pairs. […]
- Central
Central: At or near the center. In anatomy and medicine (as elsewhere), central is the opposite of “peripheral” which means away from the center. The word “peripheral” comes from the Greek “peripheria” (“peri-“, around or about + “pherein”, to bear, carry). A central line is an infusion tube that is located in or near the […]
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Central core disease of muscle: One of the conditions that produces ‘floppy baby’ syndrome. Central core disease of muscle causes hypotonia (low muscle tone) in a newborn baby, slowly progressive muscle weakness, and muscle cramps after exercise. Muscle biopsy shows a key diagnostic finding of absent mitochondria in the center of many muscle fibers. It […]
- Central line
Central line: An infusion tube located in or near the heart, which is at the center of the circulatory system. For example, a Swan-Ganz catheter with its tip in the right atrium and ventricle of the heart is a central line.