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Zollinger-Ellison syndrome

Zollinger-Ellison syndrome

1 8.4
A rare condition where tumors in the pancreas or upper small intestine cause high stomach acid and severe ulcers
  • noun
  • /ˈzɔːlɪŋɡər ˈɛlɪsən ˈsɪnˌdroʊm/
  • Specialized
: síndrome de Zollinger-Ellison
  • The patient was diagnosed with Zollinger-Ellison syndrome after presenting with multiple peptic ulcers.

Examples

  • Treatment for Zollinger-Ellison syndrome often requires medications to reduce stomach acid and sometimes surgery.

  • Doctors considered Zollinger-Ellison syndrome due to the unusually high levels of gastric acid found.

  • Is Zollinger-Ellison syndrome hereditary?

  • What is Zollinger-Ellison syndrome?

  • The patient was diagnosed with Zollinger-Ellison syndrome after presenting with multiple peptic ulcers.

  • Doctors considered Zollinger-Ellison syndrome due to the unusually high levels of gastric acid found.

  • Treatment for Zollinger-Ellison syndrome often requires medications to reduce stomach acid and sometimes surgery.

Surface Forms

Morphology

Zollinger-Ellison + syndrome

This is an eponymic medical term: 'Zollinger-Ellison' is a proper name with no lexical meaning for a learner, and 'syndrome' only signals a set of symptoms. Knowing the constituent words would not allow a B1 learner to infer the specific medical features (peptic ulcers, excess acid, pancreatic/duodenal tumors), so the meaning is not derivable from the parts.

Etymology

Zollinger-Ellison syndrome is named after the two doctors, Zollinger and Ellison, who first described patients with many painful stomach ulcers. They found the ulcers came from 'too much stomach acid' caused by small tumors, so today the name means that rare condition of many ulcers and high acid.