From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishembolismem‧bo‧lis‧m /ˈembəlɪzəm/ noun [countable] medicalMI something such as a hard mass of blood or a small amount of air that blocks a tube carrying blood through the body
Examples from the Corpus
embolism• Feeley, working on an embolism the size of a golf ball, broke into the conversation and started screaming at Marvin.• a coronary embolism• Do our surgical colleagues stop doing total hip replacements for pain because of the incidence of possible fatal embolism?• Doctors were forced to amputate her right leg, but Jennifer died when a blood clot caused a pulmonary embolism.• They said she had pulmonary embolism and 7 days later, she died.• One patient died because of pulmonary embolism during the postoperative period.• He was admitted to the general medical service at Pinderfields General Hospital with a provisional diagnosis of pulmonary embolism.• One patient in the control group died of pulmonary embolism.Origin embolism (1800-1900) Modern Latin embolismus, from Greek emballein; → EMBLEM 