Edit the following sentence to eliminate jargon:

A 78-year-old woman with a congenital heart and a history of high blood pressure and heart attack was admitted to the hospital and prepped for surgery.

Highlight for the answer:

A 78-year-old woman with congenital heart disease and a history of high blood pressure and myocardial infarction was admitted to the hospital and prepared for surgery.

Editor’s Note: A heart is not congenital; the preferred terminology is congenital heart disease or congenital cardiac anomaly. Myocardial infarction, not heart attack, is the preferred term. Patients are prepared, not prepped, for surgery (§11.4, Jargon, pp 408-410 in print). Some of these terms may be acceptable for certain types of writing; peer-reviewed medical journals generally avoid them.—Laura King, ELS