The Description holds descriptionsthat describe SNOMED CT concepts.A descriptionis used to give meaning to a conceptand provide well-understood and standard ways of referring to a concept.
Field | Data type | Purpose | Part of Primary Key | |
id | Uniquely identifies the description. | NO | YES (Full/Snapshot) | |
Specifies the inclusive date at which the component version's state became the then current valid state of the component | YES | YES (Full) Optional (Snapshot) | ||
Specifies whether the state of the descriptionwas activeor inactivefrom the nominal release date specified by the effectiveTime . | YES | NO | ||
Identifies the descriptionversion's module. Set to a childof 900000000000443000 | Module| within the metadata hierarchy. | YES | NO | ||
conceptId | Identifies the conceptto which this descriptionapplies. Set to the identifierof a conceptin the 138875005 | SNOMED CT Concept| hierarchywithin the Concept. Note that a specific version of a descriptionis not directly bound to a specific version of the conceptto which it applies. Which version of a descriptionapplies to a conceptdepends on its effectiveTime and the point in time at which it is accessed. | NO | NO | |
languageCode | Specifies the languageof the descriptiontext using the two character ISO-639-1 code. Note that this specifies a languagelevel only, not a dialector country code. | NO | NO | |
Identifies whether the descriptionis fully specified namea synonymor other descriptiontype. This field is set to a childof 900000000000446008 | Description type| in the Metadata hierarchy. | NO | NO | ||
The descriptionversion's text value, represented in UTF-8 encoding. | YES | NO | ||
Identifies the conceptenumeration value that represents the case significance of this descriptionversion. For example, the term may be completely case sensitive, case insensitive or initial letter case insensitive. This field will be set to a childof 900000000000447004 | Case significance| within the metadata hierarchy. | YES | NO |
Only one descriptionrecord with the same id field will be current at any point in time. The current record will be the one with the most recent effectiveTime before or equal to the point in time under consideration.
If the activefield of this record is false ('0'), then the descriptionis inactiveat that point in time. If the activefield is true ('1'), then the descriptionis associated with the conceptidentified by the conceptId field.
The conceptId field, the languageCode field and the typeId field will not change between two rows with the same id, in other words they are immutable. Where a change is required to one of these fields, then the component will be inactivated (by appending a row with the same id and the activefield set to false) and a another row will be added representing a new component with a new id. Only limited changes may be made to the term field, as defined by editorial rules.
Each conceptwill have at least one active descriptionwith a typeId of 900000000000013009 | synonym| and at least one active descriptionwith a typeId of 900000000000003001 | Fully specified name| .
Where a conceptonly has one active descriptionwith a typeId of 900000000000003001 | Fully specified name| across all languagecodes within a release, then that Descriptioncan be taken as the Fully Specified Namefor all languagesand dialects,and need not be explicitly included in every language reference setassociated with that release.
The term field will be restricted as follows:
- to an overall maximum length of 32Kb;
to a maximum length, configurable for each description typeas defined in the 900000000000538005 | Description format reference set| member associated with that description type- see the Description Format Reference Set specifications document for more details.
The 900000000000538005 | Description format reference set| also defined the format of the term field (plain text, limited HTML, XHTML) for each description type.
Control characters (including TABs, CRs and LFs) will not appear in 900000000000540000 | Plain text| or 900000000000541001 | Limited HTML| format types.
Related Links
Feedback
Overview
Content Tools
Apps