Medical terms are constructed from component parts. These parts are the:

• root word
• prefix
• suffix
• combining vowel(s)

When these parts are combined to form a medical term, you can understand the meaning of the whole term by understanding and combining the meaning of each part.

Therefore, the key to understanding medical terminology is to learn the meaning of the root words, prefixes, and suffixes, and to see how these are combined to produce the medical word.