When health care professionals use certain technical terms not found in the Diccionario de la Lengua Española of the Real Academia Española (RAE) and raise questions about their meanings, it is appropriate to ask what is meant. Of course, there are words that are universally understood, such as pain, and others, such as the broad term fatigue, that may have different nuances for different people. The risk of confusion when imprecise terms are used —which the author and reader may interpret differently— is evident.1
Accuracy is the main consideration in scientific texts and is sometimes achieved with more than one word. In fact, not every concept requires using a single word, particularly if no single word exists and the word must be invented, thus requiring the reader to ask what is meant by the term.
Do we need to use vasculature when the author himself2 proposes alternatives with more than one word? He uses vasculature to refer to all the blood vessels of the body or to the vascular system of an organ or area of the body. Although brief wording is recommended, possibly justifying the use of a single word instead of several, content clarity is also an issue. When choosing words that are comprehensible for patients and their relatives, the word vasculature is not likely to be risk-free.3 Certainly, the term musculature is more easily recognized than the neologism vasculature, which will require some passage of time before it is readily understood.
It is a concern that vasculature, a word used in information provided to patients or relatives in outpatient or hospital situations, is simply another word with an unclear meaning for most of the population.