vielleicht kannst Du das ja erst einmal den deutschsprachigen Leo's erklaeren, ich zB wuesste mit "Stoma" nichts anzufangen

@Rex: Medizinisch korrekt: Enterostoma = künstl. Darmausgang.

nachdem das ja nun geklärt wäre ...

Selbsthilfegruppe ist in LEO, und Stoma is Stoma auch in englisch

oh, ok

thanks for clearing that up for this ignorant guy

My pleasure! ;-)

As far as I know, the normal term in English is 'ostomy,' referring to the procedure as a whole, not just the opening in the skin. The most common kind of ostomy is a colostomy; there are both ostomy support groups and colostomy support groups.

The word 'stoma' also exists in English but is highly technical, that is, unknown to most laypeople. In medicine, it can refer to any ostomy opening, not only colostomy, probably the most common kind, but also tracheostomy, urostomy, and ileostomy.

I hope 'artificial anus' wasn't a serious suggestion. It may not be technically incorrect, but as far as I know, it would not be used for an opening distant from the actual anus.

according to LEO it actually is "artificial anus"

@Rex: Good Lord. Well, maybe it's British or something. On the other hand, it may have only have been an over-hasty conclusion based on that one previous short forum discussion. I'll sleep on it before running off to Wrong Entry; maybe Marianne or Mark or someone else familiar with BE medical terms can help.

@hm

I was hoping the people who really need to talk about it would rather use the latin term anyway, or was it greek. You know what I mean.

"stoma" is indeed used in the UK to cover various "ostomies" of the gastrointestinal and urinary tracts.
Patient information is provided on "stoma care"
http://hcd2.bupa.co.uk/fact_sheets/html/Stoma...
http://www.kingsch.nhs.uk/clinical/clinical.a...
and "stoma care nurses"/"stoma nurses" are specially qualified healthcare workers
http://www.cancerhelp.org.uk/help/default.asp...
"UK Self Help
Stoma
British Colostomy Association, Tel 0118 939 1537/Helpline 0800 328 4257
Ileostomy & Internal Pouch Support Group, Helpline 0800 0184 724
NASPCS, Tel 01560 322 024
Urostomy Association, Tel 01245 224 294"
http://www.ukselfhelp.info/?
"Oldham Stoma Support Group
Description: This group aims to provide mutual advice, support and information for existing and newly diagnosed ileostomy, colostomy and urostomy patients and their families."
http://www.aditus.nhs.uk/Aditus/Patients+and+...
"artificial anus" serves only as a description and would be completely inappropriate for a self-help group
e.g.
"The stoma serves the purpose of an artificial anus, or less often urinary tract opening, after the original one has been removed surgically."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8124-...

I hope, I manage this correctly!
I knew the word stoma and colostomy-bag.
I did not know how to put the parts of the word together.
I shall try stoma self-help group for England and India/Saudi-Arabia and see what happens

@kikaz: Just in case you're interested, I did a quick survey on Google to see which terms seem to be used more often. Here are the number of times each phrase occurred:

colostomy self-help group 0
stoma self-help group 1 (.uk)
ostomy self-help group 2 (.ca)
colostomy support group 84 (9 .uk)
stoma group 110 (12 .uk)
stoma support group 152 (73 .uk)
ostomy group 466 (11 .uk)
ostomy support group 12,000 (97 .uk)

So I would still recommend 'support group' and, barring further evidence, would suggest that 'ostomy' may be far more common than 'stoma' worldwide, and apparently at least as well known within the UK.

However, whichever you choose, your correspondents can probably look it up in a dictionary if they don't understand. Good luck in any case. (-: