stereotactic

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The Word of the Day for February 11 is:

stereotactic   \stair-ee-uh-TAK-tik\   adjective
     : involving, being, utilizing, or used in a surgical technique for 
precisely directing the tip of a delicate instrument (as a needle) or beam of 
radiation in three planes using coordinates provided by medical imaging in 
order to reach a specific locus in the body

Example sentence:
     "Brain surgery without the knife," declared an ad for stereotactic 
radiosurgery.

Did you know?
     At the beginning of the 20th century, neurosurgeons were experimenting 
with a technique used to direct the tip of a needle or an electrode in three 
spatial planes (length, width, and depth) to reach a particular place in the 
brain. At that time, the word for this technique was "stereotaxic," based on 
the prefix "stereo-" ("dealing with three dimensions of space") and "taxis" 
(referring to the manual restoration of a displaced body part). In 1950, 
"stereotactic" (based on "tactic," meaning "of or relating to touch") joined 
the medical vocabulary as a synonym of "stereotaxic." Around the same time, a 
noninvasive neurosurgery technique was developed using beams of radiation. It 
is this procedure that is now often referred to by "stereotactic" and (less 
frequently) "stereotaxic."  






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