Embolisations

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The process of deliberately blocking blood vessels using materials to prevent blood flow ; a medical procedure to stop bleeding or cut off blood supply to a lesion ; a technique used in therapy to treat vascular abnormalities or tumors by occluding vessels
2. A treatment involving intentional obstruction of arteries using substances to halt circulation ; a clinical method to control hemorrhage or reduce blood flow to specific body parts ; a therapeutic intervention to manage abnormal blood vessels by causing vessel closure
3. The act of inducing vessel blockage to restrict blood passage for medical purposes ; a surgical approach to arrest bleeding or starve tumors of blood ; a specialized procedure in which vessels are closed off to treat certain pathological conditions

Etymology: "Embolisations" is the plural of "embolisation", the act or procedure of deliberately blocking a blood vessel. Because it is an inflected form, its history lies in the singular, which is built from "embolism", a word that goes back to Greek "embolismos", meaning an insertion or a thing thrown in, from "emballein", "to throw in". The Greek root joins "en-", "in", with "ballein", "to throw", so the sense of something being driven into a passage is preserved in the medical meaning. The "-isation" ending comes from French and Latin "-izare", a suffix forming verbs of making or doing, which later gave nouns denoting the process of bringing something about. Medical writers therefore formed "embolisation" as a noun for the act of blocking a vessel with a deliberately placed plug, and the plural "embolisations" simply counts separate procedures or cases.

Synonyms: blockages, occlusions