Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun An agent or instrument used to destroy abnormal tissue by burning, searing, or scarring, including caustic substances, electric currents, lasers, and very hot or very cold instruments.
  • noun The act or process of cauterizing.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A burning or searing, as of morbid flesh, by a hot iron or by caustic substances that burn, corrode, or destroy the solid parts of an animal body.
  • noun The instrument or drug employed in cauterizing.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Med.) A burning or searing, as of morbid flesh, with a hot iron, or by application of a caustic that will burn, corrode, or destroy animal tissue.
  • noun The iron of other agent in cauterizing.
  • noun a substance or agent (as a hot iron) which cauterizes or sears by actual heat; or the burning so effected.
  • noun a substance which cauterizes by chemical action; as, lunar caustic; also, the cauterizing produced by such substance.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun medicine The process of using either extreme heat or extreme cold to either cut or seal body tissue.
  • noun medicine A device used for cutting or sealing body tissue.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun an instrument or substance used to destroy tissue for medical reasons (eg removal of a wart) by burning it with a hot iron or an electric current or a caustic or by freezing it
  • noun the act of coagulating blood and destroying tissue with a hot iron or caustic agent or by freezing

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English cauterie, from Latin cautērium, branding iron, cautery, from Greek kautērion, from kaiein, kau-, to burn.]

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Examples

  • I set the lamp back in its place while the doctor dug in his bag and brought out a small tray and what must have been a cautery tool.

    Arcane Circle Linda Robertson 2011

  • Electrical current (cautery) is used to cut off the blood supply from umbilical arteries and vein to a non-viable, parasitic twin.

    Glossary 2010

  • The margins of the surgically removed cervical tissue are easier for the pathologist to evaluate, because the cautery used in a LEEP procedure literally fries the tissue at the place where the tissue is cut away.

    Patricia Yarberry Allen: What to Do if You Have Genital HPV Patricia Yarberry Allen 2010

  • The margins of the surgically removed cervical tissue are easier for the pathologist to evaluate, because the cautery used in a LEEP procedure literally fries the tissue at the place where the tissue is cut away.

    Patricia Yarberry Allen: What to Do if You Have Genital HPV Patricia Yarberry Allen 2010

  • In your case, the cone biopsy done by the LEEP method, which uses cautery to cut out the tissue, showed normal margins, free of abnormal cells.

    Patricia Yarberry Allen: What to Do if You Have Genital HPV Patricia Yarberry Allen 2010

  • The margins of the surgically removed cervical tissue are easier for the pathologist to evaluate, because the cautery used in a LEEP procedure literally fries the tissue at the place where the tissue is cut away.

    Patricia Yarberry Allen: What to Do if You Have Genital HPV Patricia Yarberry Allen 2010

  • Selective bipolar umbilical cord cautery and transection of anomalous parabiotic twin The patient was a 33-year-old, second pregnancy, referred at 21 weeks gestational age for pregnancy complicated by a monochorionic, monoamniotic (single shared placenta, single shared amniotic sac) twin pregnancy, with one twin reported to have multiple congenital anomalies.

    Twin Reversed Arterial Perfusion Sequence and Bipolar Cord 2010

  • I set the lamp back in its place while the doctor dug in his bag and brought out a small tray and what must have been a cautery tool.

    Arcane Circle Linda Robertson 2011

  • In your case, the cone biopsy done by the LEEP method, which uses cautery to cut out the tissue, showed normal margins, free of abnormal cells.

    Patricia Yarberry Allen: What to Do if You Have Genital HPV Patricia Yarberry Allen 2010

  • In your case, the cone biopsy done by the LEEP method, which uses cautery to cut out the tissue, showed normal margins, free of abnormal cells.

    Patricia Yarberry Allen: What to Do if You Have Genital HPV Patricia Yarberry Allen 2010

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