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Some of us have the habit of reading all health-related documents very carefully – i.e. lists, consents, referrals, prescriptions and exemptions – others only browse them for directly interesting information (e.g. for how long was L4 issued, at what doses and at what times taking prescribed medication). Many are wondering about the markings on some documents that start with the acronym ICD followed by a number followed by a sequence of characters. Generally speaking, this code corresponds to the ailments diagnosed in the patient on the International Classification of Diseases list.
The World Health Organization has developed a system for the classification of diseases, ailments and causes of death – this list is constantly being supplemented as it is joined by new diagnosed and described disease entities. Its application is aimed, inter alia, at providing statistical data on the incidence of various diseases in various regions of the world. By collecting such data, it is possible to protect the health of a large number of people, because information is exchanged that gain an extremely wide context. Doctors reflecting on the same problem in different places on the planet can compare the results of their thoughts with teams working in facilities with completely different parameters (even climate), developing solutions suitable for the general public.
ICD – 10
The idea of classifying diseases to facilitate diagnosis and to collect statistical and epidemiological information was born in the XNUMXth century, when Carl Linnaeus, William Cullen and François Boissier de Sauvages de Lacroix presented their dissertations. Initially, the most important purpose of the classification was to recognize how large the percentage of deaths is related to a given disease, and thus, in a sense, to orientate the percentage of survival in a specific disease entity.
As a result of the International Statistical Congresses, work was initiated on an international classification of causes of death, which was developed independently by two scientists William Farr and Marc d’Espine. Over time, Farr’s concept turned out to be the basis of the first widely used Classification of Causes of Death. The list functioned first in America, then it was also introduced in Europe. With time, apart from deaths, the subject of interest in medical statistics was also the incidence of certain diseases, which is why many countries created their own classifications of morbidity on the basis of the 4-fold revised classification of causes of death. In 1938, work began on their standardization, thanks to which the International List of Diseases was created.
In 1946, the classifications were combined into the International List of Diseases and Causes of Death. The list is revised through an international conference convened by the World Health Organization every 10 years. The last name of the list so far is the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Health Problems, adopted at the tenth revision of the classification in 1994. It is the classification number that is the number that follows the abbreviation ICD.
Classifying diseases in the ICD – 10
What is the coding of diseases in the ICD-10 classification? Each disease entity is assigned a letter referring to a large group of diseases related to a specific area of research interest in the human body, followed by two numbers corresponding to the given disease. The notation may end here or there is one more digit after the period that refers to the disease subtype. If the dot is followed by the number 8, it means that the given subtype of the disease has not yet been described in the classification (which will probably happen with the introduction of the ICD – 11), and if it is 9 – it means that there are some unknowns (this code means “Undefined”).
For example: L70 is a code that refers to the letter L to “diseases of the skin and subcutaneous tissue”, while the number 70 in this chapter means juvenile acne, otherwise common. True to its name, the ICD-10 classification records not only diseases – and so the X87.3 code will refer to “external causes of illness and death”, and specific numbers indicate “pesticide crime” with details that there was him in the “place for sports and gymnastics”.
The Polish language version of the ICD-10 classification is widely available and can be found on many websites. The document is divided into three volumes, of which the patient is most interested in the first. All the currently functioning codes with a translation have been noted here, thanks to which it is easy to find an interesting unit and find out what disease is hidden under one or another sequence of characters.