Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Bronchoscope
/ˈbrɒŋkəskoʊp/noun
An instrument passed into the airways to inspect them, take samples or remove obstructions.
The Greek roots
βρόγχος
brónchos
windpipe, throat
σκοπεῖν
skopeîn
to look at, examine
Literally: “windpipe viewer”
The story of the word
Gustav Killian pushed a rigid tube down a farmer's throat in Freiburg in 1897 and pulled out a piece of pork bone, which is the founding act of the specialty. Βρόγχος is the windpipe, and Greek had a near-twin, βράγχια, for the gills of fish. Everything before 1966 had to be done through a straight metal tube and a patient willing to hold still; the flexible instrument came that year from Shigeto Ikeda in Tokyo.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- late 19th century
Same family
bronchitisbronchusbronchiolebronchial
In a sentence
The bronchoscope found the peanut in the right main bronchus.
They took the biopsy through a bronchoscope under sedation.