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Could similar-sounding medical terms be contributing to hospital errors that put patients at risk?

Melinda Lyons of Britain's University of Cambridge thinks so. In today's issue of The Lancet, she argues that using the "limited vocabulary of dead languages" to create new medical terminology can be confusing for health care professionals as well as patients.

A lot of medical terms have similar-sounding ancient Greek or Latin roots with completely opposite meanings. For instance, hypertension refers to high blood pressure, while hypotension means low blood pressure.

Many drugs names are also very similar. An earlier research paper concluded that up to 25 per cent of medication errors arise from confusion over drug names, Dr. Lyons noted in an e-mail interview.

"The risk of adverse consequences of sound-alike terms is greatest if they are used in time-pressured situations ... and there are high levels of noise and distraction," she writes in the medical journal.

What's more, confusion can arise from the interpretation of different accents or handwritten instructions.

To minimize mistakes, Dr. Lyons said, hospital procedures need to be standardized and doctors should communicate with patients in plain language, rather than medical jargon.

"Any process of change in the current language and culture of medicine is likely to be long and challenging," Dr. Lyons acknowledged in an e-mail. But, she added, doctors have good reason to embrace change.

"In the U.K. in 2000, a pediatrician's home was attacked as the attackers had confused her job title with the term 'pedophile.' I am sure this event would not have occurred if the terms in use were 'child doctor' and 'child abuser,' " she said.

IT'S 'HEAVY' DOPE, DUDE

German doctors were recently baffled by a sudden flurry of patients with lead poisoning - the first such cases they had seen in several decades. In just four months, 29 people were admitted to Leipzig-area hospitals with telltale signs of exposure to the toxic metal. The patients, ranging in age from 16 to 33, were suffering from symptoms that included nausea, vomiting, fatigue and even hallucinations. At first, the German physicians were perplexed by the mysterious cases. Their first real clue came when the patients conceded to being regular marijuana users. The doctors asked for a few weed samples, and laboratory tests revealed that the dope contained lead.

They now suspect dope dealers deliberated added the heavy metal to marijuana so they could charge more for the elicit drug.

To alert other doctors of this new potential source of lead poisoning, staff at University Hospital Leipzig have written a report that was recently published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

"Lead particles smoked in a joint, which can have a core temperature of 1,200 C, are very effectively absorbed into the respiratory tract," they warn.

DON'T DIGEST THAT TEA

Some foods are apparently packed with natural cancer-fighting compounds. But once they pass through the human gut, their beneficial properties may be altered, a new study suggests.

Researchers at Ohio State University and Purdue University in Indiana are investigating the effects of digestion on catechins, anti-cancer compounds found in green and black tea.

In laboratory experiments, they exposed colon cancer cells to both whole and digested catechin extracts. The anti-cancer effects of green tea was cut by 50 per cent when the extracts were digested. But the tumour-fighting abilities of catechins in black tea were unaffected by digestion.

"I think it's very important that we start to think about the role of digestion on these compounds," said Ohio State researcher Joshua Bomser, who presented the findings in San Diego, Calif., at a recent meeting of the American Society for Nutrition. "By understanding the process, we may be able to maximize the benefit from consuming a particular food."

For instance, a separate experiment conducted by Mario Ferruzzi at Purdue found that adding lemon juice or vitamin C to green tea helped protect against digestive degradation, allowing 80 per cent of the catechins to remain available for the body to absorb.

The researchers must still demonstrate the laboratory findings mirror what really happens inside the human body. "It's a complicated process," Dr. Bomser said. He added that digestion, and the interaction of different foods in the gut, could either minimize or enhance the healing powers of natural compounds.