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I always see the letters Dx as the abbreviation of diagnosis, but I never understand how does this letter relate to the word diagnosis which doesn't contain the letter x. Therefore my question is
What do these two letters (Dx) stand for?
An example using these letters: Dx: atrial fibrilation and right bundlebranch block. (in cardiology)
There are a number of abbreviations which use the first letter and an 'x'. The other ones I can think of are:
Rx - Latin recipe ("take" - the traditional first word of a recipe!)
Tx - transmit/transmission
Rx - receive/reception
I suspect that the practice goes back to scribal abbreviations, though I don't know for sure.
Dx is an abbreviation for a medical diagnosis or diagnostic (tool).
If you Google search on Dx diagnostics you can find numerous references.
dx is also used in radio communications, but that meaning is different (included in the above definition).
It comes from the manuscript practice of adding a crossbar to a letter to indicate that it's an abbreviation, like with Rx, the diagonal of the R was extended downward and crossed, so that it resembled a ligature of R and x. As typesetting was introduced, the lower-case x was a convenient way to represent such abbreviations.
