1The surgical removal of body tissue.
- ‘Treatment by surgical excision or physical ablation of the excess tissue may improve cosmetic appearance.’
- ‘All seven patients with diverticula of the CS who were not treated with catheter or surgical ablation eventually died.’
- ‘Endometrial ablation is the first surgical advance in the treatment of menorrhagia since hysterectomy.’
- ‘Treatment for menorrhagia may include hormone therapy, endometrial curettage, endometrial ablation, or hysterectomy.’
- ‘Many surgeons, who require precision in their tissue ablation, prefer the pulsed mode of operation.’
- ‘Radiofrequency ablation is the targeted cautery of cardiac tissue by local application of radiofrequency energy.’
- ‘Most patients having laser ciliary body ablation need to continue drug treatment.’
- ‘With newer and safer techniques available, hysteroscopic resection procedures for endometrial ablation are being performed less frequently.’
- ‘Endometrial ablation is a procedure that offers an effective surgical treatment option for women with menorrhagia who want to avoid hysterectomy.’
- ‘Physicians should discuss risks and benefits of all options, including endometrial ablation and hysterectomy, with each patient.’
2The removal of snow and ice from a glacier or iceberg by melting or evaporation.
- ‘A glacier forms whenever the accumulation of snow/ice exceeds ablation over a sustained period of time.’
- ‘It provides an estimate of how much precipitation or temperature change must be invoked to explain the current net ablation of the glacier.’
- ‘Searches were delayed until June, when snow ablation was 90% complete.’
- ‘Thermodynamic processes control the growth and ablation of ice.’
- ‘Conduction of heat to the glacier surface from the air and condensation of water vapour are important variables causing ablation.’
- 2.1The erosion of rock, typically by wind action.
- ‘The stream loads will likely experience almost continual aggradation and ablation.’
- ‘Potassic minerals were degassed with an argon laser probe using step heating or direct ablation of grains on thin rock sections.’
- ‘Some slopes are steep and sharply incise ancient surfaces of ablation, as is the case south of PA2 and PA4.’
- ‘It is on actively moving glacier ice covered by rock debris called ablation or surface moraine.’
- 2.2The loss of surface material from a spacecraft or meteorite through evaporation or melting caused by friction with the atmosphere.
- ‘This thing came screaming down through the Martian atmosphere and it underwent some ablation.’
- ‘The most effective thermal protection method for single re-entry vehicles was ablation.’
- ‘Deceleration of meteorites begins high in the atmosphere where the surface of the incoming body heats up to incandescence causing melting and ablation.’
Late Middle English (in the general sense ‘taking away, removal’): from late Latin ablatio(n-), from Latin ablat- ‘taken away’, from ab- ‘away’ + lat- ‘carried’ (from the verb ferre).