Umbilicus
The vestige left behind on a newborn’s belly when the umbilical cord is cut. Also called the navel or belly button.
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- Unassisted childbirth
Birth of a baby without the assistance of an obstetrician, midwife, or other health professional. This may be by accident or by design. Unassisted childbirth is fraught with risks since about a fifth of apparently normal pregnancies develop unexpected complications during labor and turn into high-risk, sometimes life-threatening, situations.
- Uncertainty
By Atul Gawande. Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt & Co., New York, 2002.
- Unconscious
1. Interruption of awareness of oneself and one’s surroundings, lack of the ability to notice or respond to stimuli in the environment. A person may become unconscious due to oxygen deprivation, shock, central nervous system depressants such as alcohol and drugs, or injury. 2. In psychology, that part of thought and emotion that happens outside […]
- Unconsciousness, temporary
Abnormal heart rhythms (heart beating too fast or too slow). Abnormalities of the heart valves (aortic stenosis or pulmonic valve stenosis). High blood pressure in the arteries supplying the lungs (pulmonary artery hypertension). Tears in the aorta (aortic dissection). Widespread disease of the heart muscle (cardiomyopathy). To be sure, many of the causes of temporary […]
- Under the weather
Colloquial expression for sick or ill as, for example, to be under the weather with the flu. The phrase “under the weather” came from British sailing ships. When a sailor became ill he was confined below deck out of the weather, so it was said that he was under the weather.