Doctor slang a 'dying art'

Medicine is a profession already overflowing with acronyms and technical terms, and doctors over the years have invented plenty of their own.

However, Dr Adam Fox, who works at St Mary's Hospital in London, says that far fewer doctors now annotate notes with abbreviations designed to spell out the unsayable truth about their patients.

Dr Fox is keen to point out that neither he, nor the other authors of the paper, published in the journal Ethics and Behavior, actually advocate using any of the terms.

See if you can interpret what these abbreviations mean and you could discover what your doctor's really saying about you.