Overview

A description may be added as part of the process of adding a new concept, or for adding translations and alternative synonyms to existing concept(s). Recall that all concepts must have at least two descriptions, one fully specified name and at least one synonym. Many concepts have multiple synonyms to provide additional terms for a given clinical idea. The topic of language or dialect-specific term preferences is explored in the 4.3.2.4.1 Language Reference Set section.

Descriptions in an extension follow the same logical design as descriptions in the International Edition. They are distributed in a description file.

Attributes

In addition to the four common attributes, descriptions use five specific attributes.

conceptId

The attribute conceptId uses the data type SCTID to link back to the concept for which this description applies. In other words linking a term with a clinical idea. The value in this field may refer to a concept in the same extension module or to a concept in a module on which the extension module depends.

languageCode

The languageCode is a two-character string, which specifies the language of the description using the ISO 639-1 standard. Please note that the languageCode only specifies the description’s language, such as English or Spanish, and does not indicate the dialect, such as US English or GB English. Dialect preferences are represented by language reference sets. Extensions may use a languageCode not used by the International Edition.

typeId

The typeId is a SCTID that specifies the type of the description. The value of this attribute always refers to a descendant of the concept | Description type|  and common alternatives are | Fully specified name| , | Synonym| , and | Definition| . Note that | Definition|  is used for text definitions and is not used in the main description distribution files but is included in the separate text definitions release file. 

term

The term attribute is a UTF-8 text string, which allows for flexibility and inclusion of characters used in non-English languages, such as the accented letters used in Nordic languages. This field is used to contain a term which will be used to describe the concept. The maximum length of a fully specified name or synonym is 255 characters. Longer terms can be defined for other description types. For example, the text definition description type permits longer strings, up to 4096 characters.

caseSignificanceId

The caseSignificanceId attribute is a SCTID which specifies how the case of the characters in the term may be changed when using the term. The values of this attribute always refer to descendants of the concept | Case significance| , and at the time of this publication, the three possible values are | Entire term case insensitive| , | Entire term case sensitive| ,or  | Only initial character case insensitive| .

Examples

In below, a row is presented from the descriptions table of the US edition, 20170901. Note that this description is associated with the extension concept from the previous example.

• The namespace identifier in the id uses a namespace allocated to the National Library of Medicine (NLM) which indicates this description was created by the US NRC
  • The partition identifier is “11” so we know this description originated in an extension
• The moduleId indicates that this description is included in the | US National Library of Medicine maintained module| , which is the same module the concept from the previous example is included in
• The conceptId links the description to the concept 5281000124103 | Persistent asthma|
  • Note that the id and the conceptId both use the namespace identifier owned by the NLM, which indicates that this description is associated with a concept in the same extension
• A languageCode of "en" indicates that this description uses the English language
• The typeId indicates that this description is a | Synonym|
• The term indicates the name of this description as "Persistent asthma"
• The caseSignificanceId indicates the term is | Entire term case insensitive|
  • This means that a range of cases such as "PERSISTENT ASTHMA" and "persistent asthma" are valid

 below, contains another row from the descriptions table of the Canadian edition, 20170430. Note that this description is assocaited with a concept from the International Edition.

• In this case, the namespace identifier in the id uses a namespace owned by Canada Health Infoway which indicates this description was created by the Canadian NRC
  • The partition identifier is “11” so once again, we know this description originated in an extension
• The moduleId indicates that this description is included in the | Canada Health Infoway French module|
• The conceptId links the description to the concept 1475003 | Herpes labialis| , which is in the 20170131 International edition
  • This is a clue that this description is a language specific term for an existing concept
• A languageCode of "fr" indicates that this description uses the French language
• The typeId indicates that this description is a | Fully specified name|
• The term indicates the name of this description as "herpès labial (trouble)"
  • Note the semantic tag, "trouble" is a French word equivalent to "disorder"
• The caseSignificanceId indicates the term is | Only initial character case insensitive|
  • This means that only "Herpès labial (trouble)" and "herpès labial (trouble)" are valid