Now if you go to the doctor and say, "It hurts to swallow. My nose is running and I can't stop coughing."

Your doctor says, "Open wide and say ahh." After looking your doctor says, "You have pharyngitis ."

You now know what that is, inflammation ( itis ) of your throat ( pharyng .)

Now back to the phrase transesophageal echocardiogram, which is the name of a medical test.

We can break up transesophageal into the following three parts:

• Trans is across
• Esophag is esophagus
• Eal means pertaining to

Transesophageal means a test that involves going across the throat.

We already figured out that echocardiogram breaks into three parts:

• Echo means using ultrasonic waves
• Cardio means heart
• Gram means recording

Echocardiogram is a recording of a heart test using ultrasonic waves.

During a transesophageal echocardiogram, you swallow a tube that does a heart test using ultrasonic waves.

Try a quiz on word beginnings and endings with quiz #3, Connecting Word Parts or proceed to the next chapter Abbreviations.