[A proposal concerning renovation of Chinese terms for cestodes with special references to metacestodes and spargana]

Some of the Chinese names involved in the cestode life cycle were not in coincidence with that of the Latin terms and their definitions, and may be imprecise in application. The term of metacestode has been misled into defining that is the larval stage in intermediate hosts or the infective stage to definite hosts; there was no specific Chinese term for sparganum which used to express it with same meaning and word as plerocercoid; the terms of oncosphere, procercoid and plerocercoid including cercomer were incorrectly translated; same meaning of hydatid and hydatid cyst were vaguely read in Chinese literature and protoscolex is concerning to a larva in the relevant literature. A renovated unified system of naming the various stages and phases of cestode development including adult in Chinese was proposed.