Alloplastic

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Referring to medical procedures that use non-biological materials to modify tissues or repair structures
2. Relating to medical interventions that incorporate synthetic materials to alter or repair biological tissues or structures
3. Pertaining to the use of artificial substances in surgical treatments to fix or replace body tissues

Etymology: Surgeons who needed a word for implants made of metal, plastic or other man-made materials built one from Greek. "Allo-" comes from Ancient Greek "ắllos", meaning "other" or "different", and it appears in English words such as "allergy" and "allopathy" (a term for conventional medicine, coined by Samuel Hahnemann to contrast with his own homeopathy). The second half is "plastic", which traces back through Latin "plasticus" to Ancient Greek "plássō", meaning "to mould or shape", and the Greek adjective "plastikós" was used of things that could be moulded into form. The combination is therefore literally "other-moulding": the tissue is shaped or replaced by something that is not the body's own. The word is a modern compound, and English speakers did not form it until the modern era of prosthetic surgery, when artificial materials began to be used routinely inside the body. Its meaning is the opposite of "autoplastic", which describes repairs made with the patient's own tissue.