Glossary

This glossary gives short equivalents for the terms used in the articles on this site.

Qualifications, documents and roles

Verifying titles and documents is dealt with in the guide on how to verify a specialist.

• Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery: the full name of a medical specialty defined in Turkish legislation.¹
• Aesthetic surgery: the field of surgery whose aim is to change appearance.
• Specialty title: the official title used on the basis of a specialty certificate obtained in accordance with the legislation for the field concerned; specialty rights acquired under earlier legislation are preserved.^1,2
• Competence (board) certificate: a certificate awarded in Turkey through the voluntary professional assessment of boards attached to specialty associations, which does not replace a specialty title and confers no authority to provide training.^2,3
• Certificate: in the regulation governing private outpatient health facilities, a document registered under the Ministry of Health Regulation on Certified Training.⁴
• Licence: in the regulation governing private outpatient health facilities, the document issued by the Ministry showing the facility's suitability for providing health services.⁴
• Operating permit: in the regulation governing private outpatient health facilities, the document issued by the provincial health directorate showing the specialties in which a medical centre will admit patients and its service units.⁴
• Responsible manager: within the scope of the regulation governing private outpatient health facilities, the physician or specialist physician who takes on the responsibilities for the running of a facility other than a private practice.⁴

Assessment, anaesthesia and care

The process surrounding consent and health records is explained in the guide on patient safety.

• Indication: the situation that gives a medical reason for an intervention to be considered.
• Informed consent: at the centre of informed consent is the consent of a person who has been informed about the subject and the consequences of the intervention to be carried out.⁵
• Consent form: the written record of the information about an intervention and of the consent given, which does not on its own take the place of informing the person orally.⁵
• Discharge summary: the summary containing the course of diagnosis and treatment carried out in hospital and the plan of treatment after discharge.⁵
• Local anaesthesia: numbing a limited area where a procedure is to be carried out while the person remains awake; regional anaesthesia, which numbs a larger area, is treated as a separate type.⁶
• Sedation: being made relaxed and drowsy with medicine, as distinct from the unconsciousness of general anaesthesia.⁶
• General anaesthesia: being given medicine so as to be unconscious and to feel nothing during an operation or procedure.⁶
• Revision: an additional intervention carried out to correct or change a procedure performed earlier.
• Drain: a thin tube for letting out fluid collecting at the site of a procedure.
• Compression garment: a supporting garment worn around the site of a procedure.
• Compression: the application of pressure to tissue from outside.

Findings and unwanted situations

• Oedema: swelling associated with fluid collecting between tissues.
• Haematoma: a collection of blood within tissue or in a cavity.
• Seroma: clear fluid collecting in a tissue cavity.
• Necrosis: the death of tissue.
• Complication: an additional unwanted problem developing during the course of an illness or an intervention.
• Asymmetry: a difference between the two sides in shape, size or position.
• Capsular contracture: the scar tissue around an implant tightening and making the breast firm.⁷
• Ptosis (upper eyelid): Ptosis is the lid margin sitting in a low position.
• Calcification: a deposit of calcium in tissue.
• Hypertrophic scar: raised, thickened scar tissue that stays within the boundaries of the original wound.⁸
• Keloid: scar tissue extending beyond the boundaries of the original wound.⁸
• Scar: the mark left in the tissue by wound healing.
• Paraesthesia: unusual sensations such as tingling.
• Animation deformity: Where the implant sits beneath the chest muscle, the shape of the breast can change temporarily when the muscle contracts.⁹

Tissue, instruments and placement planes

• Graft: tissue transferred to another site without being carried with its own blood supply.
• Flap: tissue moved with its blood supply preserved, or re-established at the site it is moved to.
• Implant: used in the sense of a foreign material placed into the body.
• Cannula: a thin, hollow tube used in transferring fluid or tissue.
• Contour: the outer shape or lines of an area.
• Endoscopic: carrying out a procedure with the inner area seen through an imaging instrument.
• Subglandular plane (beneath the breast tissue): The implant sits directly under the breast tissue, on top of the muscle.
• Subfascial plane (beneath the muscle fascia): The implant sits under the thin sheet covering the chest muscle.
• Submuscular plane (beneath the muscle): The implant sits under the chest muscle.
• Dual plane (partly beneath the muscle): The upper part of the implant sits under the muscle and the lower part under the breast tissue.

Reading research results

• Systematic review: a review produced by finding, selecting and appraising, through explicit methods, the research addressing a particular question.¹⁰
• Meta-analysis: the combining of research results by statistical methods.¹⁰
• Randomised trial: a study in which the interventions compared are allocated at random.¹⁰
• Control group: the group compared with the intervention under study, which may receive another intervention or be followed without one.¹⁰
• Placebo: a substance or treatment used for comparison that does not contain the active component being tested.¹¹
• Follow-up duration: the period over which participants' condition and outcomes are followed in a study, which does not mean the effect is certainly maintained throughout that period.¹¹
• Confidence interval (CI): A confidence interval shows the uncertainty of the estimate in the research; it is not a guaranteed range of results for an individual.¹²
• Predictive interval: A predictive interval is the range calculated for the values the association might take in a similar new study.¹³
• Relative risk (RR): the ratio of the probability of the same outcome in two groups.¹²
• Odds ratio (OR): the comparison between two groups of the odds of an outcome occurring against it not occurring.¹²
• I²: I² summarises differences between study results that are not explained by chance alone.¹³
• Denominator: the value by which another value is divided when calculating a ratio or rate, expressed in units such as the number of people or total follow-up time, depending on the study.¹²
• Standardised mean difference (SMD): The SMD is a standardised expression of the mean difference between groups; the difference is expressed in standard deviation units reflecting the spread of measurements within groups.¹²

References

1. Republic of Turkey. Law no. 1219 on the Practice of Medicine and its Branches. Official Gazette, 14 April 1928, no. 863. Article 10 and Schedule Ek-1. mevzuat.gov.tr ↩ ↩²

2. Ministry of Health. Regulation on Specialty Training in Medicine and Dentistry. Official Gazette, 3 September 2022, no. 31942. Articles 22 and 27, including the reservation of specialty rights acquired under earlier legislation. saglik.gov.tr ↩ ↩²

3. Turkish Medical Association, Coordination Council of Specialty Associations. UDEK Bulletin, June 2022, Special Issue on Medical Specialty Training. Section "Turkish Medical Association Medical Specialty Competence Boards", pp. 26-29. ttb.org.tr ↩

4. Ministry of Health. Regulation on Private Health Facilities Providing Outpatient Diagnosis and Treatment. Official Gazette, 19 April 2025, no. 32875. Articles 4(1)(c), 4(1)(h), 4(1)(j), 14(1), 14(5) and 14(6). saglik.gov.tr ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

5. Ministry of Health. Patient Rights Regulation. Official Gazette, 1 August 1998, no. 23420. Article 4(h), the final paragraph of article 24, and articles 26 and 31. saglik.gov.tr ↩ ↩² ↩³

6. NHS. General anaesthetic. Page last reviewed 29 November 2024. nhs.uk; Local anaesthetic. Page last reviewed 17 December 2025. Section "Other types of anaesthetic". nhs.uk ↩ ↩² ↩³

7. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Risks and Complications of Breast Implants. "Local Complications and Adverse Outcomes" table and the "Capsular Contracture" section. fda.gov ↩

8. DermNet. Keloid and hypertrophic scar. September 2022. dermnetnz.org ↩ ↩²

9. Dyrberg DL, Bille C, Gunnarsson GL, et al. Breast animation deformity. Arch Plast Surg. 2019;46(1):7-15. doi:10.5999/aps.2018.00479 ↩

10. SURE Guides, version 2.1. Glossary of selected terms. Document hosted by Cochrane EPOC. Entries "Systematic review", "Meta-analysis" and "Randomised controlled trial"; the basis used for the control group is the "Randomised controlled trial" entry, which covers comparison with another intervention and with no intervention together. cochrane.org ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

11. National Institutes of Health, National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences. Toolkit Glossary. Entries "Placebo" and "Follow-up Duration". Placebo; Follow-up Duration ↩ ↩²

12. Cochrane. Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions, version 6.5. 2024. Chapter 6: Choosing effect measures and computing estimates of effect, sections 6.2, 6.4.1, 6.5.1.2 and 6.7.1; Chapter 15: Interpreting results and drawing conclusions, section 15.3.1. Chapter 6; Chapter 15 ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

13. Cochrane. Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions, version 6.5. 2024. Chapter 10: Analysing data and undertaking meta-analyses, sections 10.10.2 and 10.10.4.3. cochrane.org ↩ ↩²