Tackling The Veterinary Terminology: Suffixes (-blast)

Remember the Spelling Bee? Big words are easier to tackle when you understand how they're put together. Veterinary terms are composed in the same way. Just like with other words, the main parts of a veterinary term are a prefix, a root, and a suffix. The difference is that they typically come more directly from Greek or Latin.

The suffix is the bit that will tell you about what procedure, condition, disease or disorder you're dealing with.

-blast [blast] from Greek - sprout, immature or embryonic cell

The odds that you might encounter words ending with this suffix in the vet's office are quite low. But since we talked about cells last time, I thought it would be interesting to include this one also. The first time I came across a word like this was when I was researching stem cells for treatment of Jasmine's arthritis and knee injury.

Stem cells are undifferentiated cells, meaning they don't have any defined purpose other than to sit quietly and wait for instructions. Once they receive their instructions, they can turn into specialized cells, such as blood cells, muscle cells and so on. Adult stem cells are vital for body's tissue repair and maintenance.

The cells important in tissue repair of joints are osteoblasts and chondroblasts.



Very simply put, osteoblasts are cells that make bone, and chondroblasts are cells that produce cartilage.

Myeloblasts are immature cells found in bone marrow, that develop into white blood cells. Erythroblasts give rise to erythrocytes, red blood cells.

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Veterinary Suffixes (-pathy)  
Veterinary Suffixes (-osis) 
Veterinary Suffixes (-iasis) 
Veterinary Suffixes (-tomy) 
Veterinary Suffixes (-ectomy)  
Veterinary Suffixes (-scopy) 
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