I'll use it in a sentence: "The intern groaned when the resident informed him that the new patient in the ER was going to be admitted for work-up of a syncopal episode."

Syncope is actual, loss-of-consciousness fainting. Near-syncope is an episode of extreme light-headedness that falls short of actual fainting.

The relationship between medical syncope and musical syncopation eludes me. The dictionary provides the etymology of both words with syncopare "to shorten" .