A set of characteristics which distinguish a concept and its subtypes from all other concepts.
Notes
- Any concept that matches the sufficient definition is equivalent to or a subtype of the defined concept.
- A concept may have more than one sufficient definition. In that case any concept that matches at least one of these sufficient definitions is equivalent to or a subtype of the defined concept.
Examples
The following set of assertions is a sufficient definition for 74400008 | appendicitis (disorder)| because any concept for which this set of assertions is true must either be the disorder appendicitis or a subtype of appendicitis.
Both the following sets of assertions are sufficient definitions for the concept 8801005 | Secondary diabetes mellitus (disorder)| :
- While each of the assertions 246075003 | Causative agent| = 105590001 | Substance| and 42752001 | Due to| = 64572001 | Disease| form part of a sufficient definition, neither of these assertions are necessary conditions because only one of them needs to be true. This illustrates that an assertion that is part of a sufficient definition need not be a necessary condition.
Change Notices
Prior to July 2018, SNOMED CT could only support one sufficient definition for each concept could not represent the 8801005 | Secondary diabetes mellitus (disorder)| example above. A further limitation, that also prevented formal representation of that example was the stated relationship file was only able to represent necessary conditions.
- Changes introduced in the July 2018 release of the International Edition allow assertions to be represented as axioms in the OWL axiom reference set file. This will allow concepts to be defined by multiple sufficient definitions, some of which may contain assertions that are not necessarily true.
- Following these changes a concept will only be marked as sufficiently defined if it is sufficiently defined by relationships. However, the OWL axioms may provide a sufficient definition that cannot be fully represented as relationships.
Alternatives
- Sufficient set
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