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Chris -- 2018-04-11

#1 2009-12-30 14:58:50

patschwieterman
Administrator
From: California
Registered: 2005-10-25
Posts: 1680

"cap-scan" for "CAT-scan"

“CAT-scan” stands for “computed/computerized axial tomography” – neither cats nor caps have anything to do with the original phrase. But I associate CAT-scans pretty strongly with tumors, brain injuries, and skull fractures, and it’s not surprising that a number of the citations I found refer explicitly to head injuries. One commenter on a nurses’ forum clearly felt a user of the reshaping was making a connection between “head” and “cap”:

Overheard in the ER, says one family member to another, “they took mom down for a “cap” scan of her head.”
http://allnurses.com/forums/f58/true-er … -6272.html

I originally went looking for examples at least a year ago, and a few of the citations below look like they may now be dead links. There are a few others out there, but this is rarer than I would have expected. It’s a bit hard to look for because there are at least two other types of legitimate “cap scans” – capacitors can apparently be scanned in some way, and the economic capacity of a nation can also “scanned.” I’d guess that there are fewer than two dozen hits for the target. Examples:

I suddenly fell unconscious, falling on the road beside it, and splitting open my head in the process. Everyone thought I had either had a heart attack, or suffered a stroke. After I was rushed by ambulance to the hospital, sewn up, and given a cap scan, doctors were at a loss, though, to explain what had happened to me.
http://codshit.blogspot.com/2004/04/mor … -plot.html

How are you so sure that no one tried to kill me when I had regular seizures for nearly four years after visiting the restautant in Caldas da Rainha – three of which nearly killed me, and the doctors, even after a cap scan, who treated me could never explain the cause of my difficulties?
http://sluggerotoole.com/index.php/webl … t_inquiry/

The ambulance trip, sewing up my head from a fall that the ricin had induced, and having a CAP scan to see if my brain had been damaged cost me a grand total of $36.
http://www.thelocal.se/discuss/viewtopi … &view=next
[I suspect that the same person wrote the last 3

Zoe needed a cap-scan to confirm the prognosis.
http://www.coos.org.sg/testimony/index. … r_zoe.html

I went back today and the cap scan was normal.
http://forums.obgyn.net/womens-health/W … /2579.html

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