sodium thiopental
1
4.9
- noun
- /ˈsoʊdiəm θaɪəˈpɛntəl/
- Specialized
:
tiopental sódico
- The doctor administered sodium thiopental before the surgery to ensure the patient was fully sedated.
- first shot of sodium thiopental
Examples
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For the euthanasia of the animals, they opted to use sodium thiopental due to its effectiveness as a sedative.
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sodium thiopental for sedation purposes.
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This is sodium thiopental.
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The animals were euthanized with 50 mg/kg sodium thiopental (Pental, E Ulugay, Turkey).
Academic text (2012) -
During the procedure, the anesthesiologist used sodium thiopental to keep the patient unconscious.
Synonyms
9
8.7
A fast-acting drug that makes a person unconscious for surgery
2
9.9
A fast medicine given into a vein to make a person sleep before surgery
A strong medicine given into a vein to make a person sleep for surgery
A fast-acting drug that makes people or animals unconscious for surgery
Surface Forms
Morphology
The term is compositionally transparent: it denotes the sodium salt/form of the compound thiopental. A B1 learner who knows 'sodium' (an element) and 'thiopental' (a barbiturate anesthetic) can infer it is a sodium-containing form of that anesthetic; this salt-naming pattern is regular and cross-linguistically common.
Etymology
Sodium thiopental gets its name from its parts: sodium shows it is a salt and the thio in thiopental means the chemical contains sulfur. It was made as a fast medicine to make people sleep, so today it is used as a 'sedative' and 'anesthetic'.