cyanotic

[sahy-uh-not-ik]

adjective

Pathology.

1. (of the skin) blue or livid due to inadequately oxygenated blood.

   Certain heart defects cause a mixing of oxygenated and deoxygenated blood, so that the patient will often exhibit a cyanotic or bluish color.

Other Word Forms

• hypercyanotic adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of cyanotic¹

First recorded in 1820–30; from Greek kýano(s) “dark blue” + -tic ( def. )

Example Sentences

"The patient became cyanotic with blue lips, movements stopped, the muscles relaxed, deep breathing followed, cyanosis waned, and color returned to the lips as the patient was moved to a recovery room."

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“I jumped the barricade and found a girl who was passed out, supine and very clearly cyanotic, or blue,” said Morbidelli, a graduate student at Auburn University in Alabama.

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The woman was what doctors call cyanotic – the medical term for seeming to have blueish skin or nails.

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The man I beheld was a short, shriveled seventy-two-year-old with a greasy sheen of perspiration coating his brow, an alarmingly cyanotic complexion, and the generalized muscle wasting of the chronically ill.

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His lips were cyanotic, one side of his face was bruised and scraped.

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