Nephrotomies

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Surgical cuts made into the kidney to access its internal structures or remove material from it
2. Operations in which the kidney is opened by a cut so that a surgeon can treat or explore it
3. Incisions made into the body of a kidney as part of a surgical procedure on that organ

Etymology: "Nephrotomies" is the plural of "nephrotomy", a surgical term for an incision into a kidney. The word is built from two Greek parts: "nephros", meaning kidney, and "tomia", from "temnein", meaning to cut. The same cutting element appears in "appendectomy" and "anatomy", where "-tomy" marks a surgical or anatomical cut. The first half, "nephro-", comes from the Greek "nephros", which went back through earlier forms to a prehistoric root for the kidney. Physicians in the modern period drew on Greek and Latin to name organs and operations, and English used this pattern for procedures that classical writers never performed. The plural simply counts several such incisions, as a surgeon's notes or a medical paper might.