Jargon of the neonatal intensive care unit.

Jargon, the specialized vocabulary and idioms, is frequently used by people of the same work or profession. The neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) ma kes no exception to this. As a matter of fact, NICU is one place where jarg on is constantly developing in parallel with the evolution of techniques an d treatments, The use of jargon within the NICU is very practical for those who work in these units. However, this jargon is frequently used by neonat ologists in medical reports or other kinds of communication with unspeciali zed physicians. Even if part of the specialized vocabulary can be decoded b y physicians not working in the NICU, they do not always know the exact pla ce that these techniques or treatments have in the management of their pati ents. The aim of this article is to describe the most frequent jargon terms used in the French NICU and to give up-to-date information on the importan ce of the techniques or treatments that they describe. (C) 2001 Editions sc ientifiques et medicales Elsevier SAS.